Christmas will be the 111th anniversary of Theodore Sanders Stern s birth. Universally known as "Ted," Stern was one of the most consequential figures in creating today’s Charleston.
By Ray Hill
As 1945 came to a close, the Second World War had been won by the Allied nations. Adolf Hitler had shot himself in his underground bunker as the Red Army overran his capital of Berlin. Benito Mussolini, the Italian dictator, had been executed by his own people and strung up by his heels at a filling station, along with the bodies of his mistress and several compatriots where their corpses were abused by angry citizens. The Japanese Empire had crumbled with President Harry Truman’s decision to drop the atomic bomb on Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Japan’s Emperor, Hirohito, who was considered a living god by his subjects, ordered his government to sue for peace. Truman’s decision may have saved as many as one million American lives.