In our last post, we discussed Marjorie Fuller and her mother (Seraphine) being held by the Japanese in China, losing their passports under Mao and finally being sent to a work camp for 21 years.
The two women would then be moved to government housing for elderly foreigners in Harbin, China. It was in this government housing that the “American women” became a curiosity and written about in guide books. While in state-run housing, Marjorie’s mother would die, Marjorie herself would have a stroke and left to languish. She would not become the pet project of Charles Paglee 15 years.
Marjorie Fuller was issued a US passport in 1995 and flown to Baltimore Maryland where an assisted living facility agreed to take her, free of charge. Even though she was partially incapacitated by the stroke, she chatted animatedly with her new American nurses.
Upon Marjorie’s death in 2006, Harry McKillop sponsored her burial. He had her body flown to McKinney, Texas where she resides in the McKillop family plot of Pecan Grove Cemetery, stateless no more.
For the record, Marjorie was the child of an American and a Polish Russian from Ukraine (Seraphine), born in Shanghai, kept captive under the Japanese and Chinese, finally coming to rest in the shadow of a magnificent Celtic cross in McKinney, Texas.
