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- From FindaGrave:
British Prime Minister.
He led Great Britain through the Second World War and during the first two years while the country was the sole resistance to German Nazi dictator Adolph Hitler while enduring intense fire bombings by Nazi Air force planes. With the war near its end, he helped broker the peace agreements which led to the partitioning of Europe by Russia and the west and it was Churchill who coined the term 'iron curtain', referring to the demarcation between east and west Europe.
He was the son of Randolph and Jennie Churchill born in Blenheim Palace, in Oxfordshire, England. He a noted politician and she an American the daughter of Leonard Jerome a New York businessman born at 426 Henry Street, Brooklyn where the home stands today with a plaque attesting to this event.
Educated at Harrow, he graduated from Sandhurst, then joined the army serving in Cuba and in South Africa where he was taken prisoner during the Boer War. His political career began with election to Parliament in 1900. Other positions followed: lord of the admiralty, secretary of state for war and air and then Chancellor of the Exchequer. Semi-retired, World War II hostilities dictated his return to his old post first lord of the admiralty.
When Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain resigned in disgrace in 1940, Churchill became Prime Minister, and remained through the end of the war. In the postwar, his party lost control of the Parliament and he was out of power. Six years later, he again assumed the reigns of power as prime minister strongly supporting initiatives for the defense of Western Europe against communist aggression.
He was knighted in 1953 and received the Nobel Prize for Literature for his chronicles of the war years.
In poor health, he left politics for good in 1955 and spent most of his retirement in southern France. While in England, his residence was located at Chartwell House in Kent where the family lived from its purchase in 1922 and where he suffered his final stroke that resulted in his death. He lingered for nine days dying at age 90, seventy years to the day of his father's death.
His body lay in state in Westminster Hall for three days followed by a state funeral service at St Paul's Cathedral. The procession leading to his burial place was elaborate and planned so as many as possible could witness this historic event. His coffin passed down the Thames, the shores lined by millions, on a barge with the cranes of London's docklands bowed in salute. At Waterloo Station, the casket was placed on a special funeral train for the final leg home.
Although offered many famous sites for his burial, he had chosen the churchyard at Bladon near Blenheim Palace which is the burial ground of the Churchill family. There is also a memorial for him at Guildhall in London.
Postscript: Churchill was a constant visitor to America either on official business or because of his American roots. In 1946, little Westminster College with an English heritage invited him to speak. Instead of delivering a brief talk, he gave a major foreign policy statement, the Iron Curtain Speech, 'From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the continent...' The Cold War began which lasted forty years.
Many monuments have been constructed around the world to Churchill but none as significant as what graces the little campus in Fulton, Missouri. Dedicated in 1969 and known as the 'Winston Churchill Memorial and Library,' a little rundown 12th century structure 'Church of St. Mary the Virgin, Aldermanbury' was relocated to Fulton from the middle of London. The historic church had the touch of Sir Christopher Wren who redesigned it in 1677. Today, it is a museum filled with artifacts and information relating to the life and times of Sir Winston Churchill. Churchill himself was intrigued by the idea of a restored Wren church to be located in America's heartland and commented, ' It may symbolize in the eyes of the English-speaking peoples the ideals of Anglo-American association of which rest, now as before, so many of our hopes for peace and the future of mankind.'
In 1963, President John F. Kennedy named him 'Honorary Citizen of the United States' but too ill to attend a White House ceremony, his son and grandson accepted the award.
Bio by: Donald Greyfield
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1874 - 1965 (90 years)
