Richard G. Fuller

Richard Gordon Fuller, 85, died Wednesday, September 6, 2006 at St. Joseph’s/Candler Hospital. He was born in Savannah and graduated from Savannah High School and The Hill School in Pottstown, PA. His further education at the University of Virginia was interrupted after a year by his enlistment as a cadet in Naval Aviation. He was commissioned an Ensign in the U.S. Naval Reserve, named a Naval Aviator in 1944, and immediately began a 13-month tour of duty in the Pacific. After the war, he was released to inactive duty as a Lieutenant j.g.. He returned to the University of Virginia, where he was elected to the University’s Raven Society for “high scholastic attainment and service to the University” and served as editor of the college magazine, Crust.
He taught English at the Episcopal High School in Alexandria, Virginia for a school year, then moved to Schenectady, N.Y. and a position in public relations with the General Electric Company. He married the late Elizabeth Carlton Sanford in 1948 and with her traveled in England and France, writing a series of travel articles for the Savannah Morning News.
Returning to this country, he lived in Alexandria, VA, working as a reporter for American Aviator Magazine and doing free-lance writing. He wrote Naval Aviation in Review and Survival on Land and Sea, both Navy textbooks, and was the author of six soft-cover “Sense” booklets, humorous training aids for Naval Aviators. He also wrote Tactical Air Power, an Air Force Publication.
Following an editorial position with Kling Studios in Chicago, he returned to Washington, D.C. and was appointed a Professional Staff Member of the Senate Committee on Post Office and Civil Service, serving under three successive Committee Chairmen, all now deceased: Senators Olin D. Johnston of South Carolina, A.S. Mike Monroney of Oklahoma, and Gale W. McGee of Wyoming. He participated in the drafting and multiple revisions of the bill which was enacted as the historic Postal Reorganization Act of 1970, abolishing the Post Office Department and establishing the U.S. Postal Service as a quasi-independent Federal agency. He was serving as Staff Director of the Committee when he retired after 23 years of service. In 1981, he returned with his wife to live in Savannah and to finish writing a novel. In June, 2001, Escape from Savannah, set in Savannah and among Georgia’s golden isles, was published nationally.
He was a parishioner of Christ Church and a former Board Chairman of the Visiting Nurse Association of Coastal Georgia. He was a member of the Oglethorpe Club, the Society of Colonial Wars, and the Huguenot Society of South Carolina.
He is survived by a son, Gordon K. Fuller, of Fairfax, VA; a daughter, Leslie F. Ransone, of Newport New, VA, and four grandchildren.

Funeral services will be 2:00 PM, Saturday, September 9, 2006 at Christ Church.

Burial will be in Bonaventure Cemetery.

Fox and Weeks Funeral Directors, Hodgson Chapel