Charles Voorheis John

T/5 in 603rd Engineer Camouflage Bn : HQ & Service Co

ASN#32869967

Born 1905 in MI, Died 1962

Artist

County of residence at enlistment: New York County, NY

Other residence(s): Manistee, MI; Lower Merion, PA; Radnor, PA; Manhattan, NY; Bronx, NY

United States Army, European Theatre of Operations

Occupation before the war: commercial artists

College education before the war: Philadelphia Museum and School of Industrial Arts; Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts

Notes: Rank changed from PVT in GA roster to T/5 per gravestone at Arlington National Cemetery; middle name also spelled "Voorhies" and "Voorhees" in several documents—"Voorheis" is the spelling on his draft card

Source: 603rd roster from Seymour Nussenbaum's scrapbook, July 1943; Photograph 91-14 GALP archive ; Bahnhof flag signature; photo of self-portrait of Charles V. John courtesy rubylane.com

Charles John was born on October 24, 1905 in Manistee, MI, the younger of two sons. His father, who had been born in England, was a photographer who eventually went to work in advertising and his mother became a teacher when her children were older.

By 1920 the family had relocated to Lower Merion, PA. Charles started his art studies at the Philadelphia Museum and School of Industrial Arts (later The University of the Arts) and graduated from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Arts. He then went to work as a commercial artist. Some time prior to 1940 he developed a specialty as a book illustrator and jacket designer and moved to New York City. His work was especially sought after for children's books.

On August 25, 1940 he married Margaret Radford, just a couple of months before he registered for the draft on October 16.

Charles enlisted on March 22, 1943 and, like other NYC artists, was assigned to the 603rd Engineer Camouflage Battalion. He saw service in Europe with the unit, and was discharged with the rank of T/5.

He returned to the Bronx, where he and Margaret lived, and resumed his art and design career. Immediately after the war (between 1946 and 1950) he designed many book jackets in the "Childhood of Famous Americans" series, published by Bobbs-Merrill, including those on Washington Irving, Pocahontas, Henry Clay, "Aleck" Bell (Alexander Graham!), Eli Whitney, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Davy Crockett, and Booker T. Washington. These illustrations were characterized by silhouetted figures against a multicolor background. (See the image slider elsewhere on this page.)

He also did jackets and interior illustrations for other children's books, including "Three Ships Came Sailing In" about Jamestown, and "Two for the Show" about a boy in Shakespeare's England.

He did some work in the adult market as well, producing book jackets for novels by Helen MacInnes and Herbert Brean, among others. His clients included several different book publishers in the US and Canada. (One early illustration he did was for the 1939 cover of the Canadian edition of Anne of Ingleside, a later book in the Anne of Green Gables series. (See the image slider.))

Sadly his wife died before her 50th birthday, on August 29, 1959, and Charles died three years later, on October 2, 1962; he was a patient at a VA hospital in East Orange, NJ at the time. The couple had no children.

Charles is buried at Arlington National Cemetery, along with his wife and his wife's parents. (Margaret's father was a Brigadier General in the Marine Corps.)

NOTE: The various versions of his obituary that were published in newspapers all over the country have an incorrect age; he was 56 at the time of his death, not 66.