Early Life and World War II Service
Bronson was born Charles Dennis Buchinsky in Ehrenfeld, Pennsylvania, in the Allegheny Mountain Coal region north of Johnstown. During the McCarthy hearings, he changed his last name to Bronson, fearing that Buchinsky sounded "too Russian".
He was one of 15 children born to a Polish-Lithuanian immigrant father of Lipka Tatar ancestry, and a Lithuanian-American mother. His father hailed from the town of Druskininkai (or Druskienniki). His mother, Mary Valinsky, whose parents were from Lithuania was born in the coal mining town of Tamaqua, Pennsylvania.
Bronson was the first member of his family to graduate from high school. As a young child, Bronson did not initially know how to speak English and only learned it in his teens. Bronson's father died when he was 10, and he went to work in the coal mines. Initially, Bronson worked in the office of a coal mine, later in the mine itself. He earned $1 per ton of coal mined. He worked there until he entered military service during World War II. His family was so poor that, at one time, he reportedly had to wear his sister's dress to school because he had nothing else to wear.
In 1943, Bronson enlisted in the United States Army Air Forces and served as an aerial gunner in the 760th Flexible Gunnery Training Squadron, and in 1945 as a B-29 Superfortress crewman with the 39th Bombardment Group based on Guam. He was awarded a Purple Heart for wounds received during his service.
Read more about this topic: Charles Bronson
Famous quotes containing the words early, life, world, war and/or service:
“To be candid, in Middlemarch phraseology, meant, to use an early opportunity of letting your friends know that you did not take a cheerful view of their capacity, their conduct, or their position; and a robust candour never waited to be asked for its opinion.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“We hear a great deal of lamentation these days about writers having all taken themselves to the colleges and universities where they live decorously instead of going out and getting firsthand information about life. The fact is that anybody who has survived his childhood has enough information about life to last him the rest of his days.”
—Flannery O’Connor (1925–1964)
“The world is wonderful and beautiful and good beyond one’s wildest imagination. Never, never, never could one conceive what love is, beforehand, never. Life can be great—quite god-like. It can be so. God be thanked I have proved it.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)
“There are two things which will always be very difficult for a democratic nation: to start a war and to end it.”
—Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–1859)
“The masochist: “I send my tormentor hurrying hither and thither in the service of my suffering and desire.””
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)