Benjamin Fuller, 90; exploits in WWII launched CIA career
In Sherborn, Benjamin Fuller read stories to local elementary school children and folded bulletins each week at Pilgrim Congregational Church.
He told his grandsons to call him "Old Goat" and knew the names of the horses and dogs he passed on his daily walks, his family said.
Few in the town, though, knew Mr. Fuller spent 22 years working for the CIA, including an assignment in Vietnam, and was a decorated World War II tank battalion captain who survived the battlefields of North Africa.
"He was very humble. He never talked about it. He was more interested in whether the horse had his carrot," said his daughter, Ridgely of Waltham.
Mr. Fuller, who lived in Sherborn for the past decade, died Oct. 12 at Wayside Hospice in Wayland after a brief illness. He was 90.
Born in Dover, he was the youngest of five siblings. The family later moved to Milton, where Mr. Fuller graduated from Milton Academy in 1936.
He went to Princeton, where he was a "mediocre student" but an avid hockey player and, he told his family, a raucous member of the Ivy Club, an eating club dating to 1879.
After graduating from Princeton in 1940, Mr. Fuller was commissioned in the Army. Before going to war, he spent a night of revelry in Boston's old Scollay Square, now Government Center, where he got a tattoo of a skull and snake on his left shoulder.
He served with field artillery in North Africa, Italy, and France. He was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross for "extraordinary heroism" for his actions in February 1943 while under fire in Tunisia, where he was captain of the 601 Tank Destroyer Battalion.
According to military records, he took five stranded men to safety before returning to the field in an unarmored vehicle to "ensure none of his men or useable equipment were left behind."
He also was awarded the Silver Star for action in North Africa in March 1943. He was wounded in the hip that day but kept his unit intact and refused to be evacuated. He left a foxhole to recover a disabled machine gun and capture several prisoners.
Wounded in the battle, Mr. Fuller was taken to the Ninth Evacuation hospital. He fell in love with his nurse there, Roberta Tayloe of Virginia. They married in Italy in 1944.
Before her death in 2000, Mrs. Fuller wrote about her wartime experiences in a book called "Combat Nurse."
"My father was incredibly handsome and she couldn't believe this attractive, glamorous man was interested in her," daughter Ridgely said.
All of Mr. Fuller's siblings served in World War II. In Milton, his mother had five blue stars in a window of the family's home during the war. The siblings all survived the war.
Mr. Fuller had originally wanted to be a veterinarian, his family said. But he wound up staying in the Army for several years after the war. His assignments included work with Russian prisoners of war in Germany. He studied at Columbia University and later received a master's degree in Russian from Harvard.
The Central Intelligence Agency recruited him in 1950. He was based in Fairfax and Alexandria, Va., and did work in Holland, Thailand, and Vietnam. He retired from the CIA in 1972.
In 1975, his Princeton classmates elected him class secretary. He kept the post until 2001. The class of 1940 created a scholarship fund in his name in 2000.
In 1995, Mr. Fuller and his wife moved to New England to be closer to his family. In Sherborn, he volunteered to read to pupils at Pine Hills Elementary School and was a loyal fan of Dover/Sherborn ice hockey and football.
In addition to his daughter, Mr. Fuller leaves a brother, Robert, 97, of Westwood; a son, Ben, of Cushing, Maine; and two grandsons.
Burial will be in Arlington National Cemetery at 1 p.m. on June 15. 