52
1946
Charles Purcell Cecil Jr.
Air Force colonel, beloved husband,
father, grandfather, and great-grand-
father, died on June 16, 2014, at Bon-
Secours St. Francis Hospital in Greenville,
S.C. He was 87.
Colonel Cecil was born on September
6, 1926, in Charleston, S.C., the son of
Mary Cecil and U.S. Navy Rear Admiral
Charles P. Cecil, who served proudly
during WWI and WWII.
Colonel Cecil transferred to St. Paul’s
School in 1942 from Fresnal School in
Arizona, a 10,000-acre cattle ranch,
where each student was responsible for
his own horse and required to work one
day a week learning all phases of ranch
life. Fresnal was forced to close due to
the hardships of World War II.
Colonel Cecil arrived at SPS as a Third
Former in the fall of 1942, following his
uncle, Francis Rue of the Form of 1914,
and his cousin, Francis Rue Jr. of the Form
of 1939 to the School. He arrived with the
goal of attending the U.S. Naval Academy
at Annapolis, Md. Colonel Cecil achieved
this goal through an accelerated gradua-
tion program that included intensive
summer-school course work. He com-
peted with Delphian and Shattuck.
Colonel Cecil’s parents – and, in parti-
cular, his father – engaged in dozens of
correspondences with SPS officials to
reinforce the importance of a “solid
secondary education” and to encourage
their son’s hard work and success, in
anticipation that he would be drafted
into service upon completion of the
Naval Academy.
Although Colonel Cecil’s father sur-
vived the sinking of the
USS Helena
in
1943, of which he was in command, he
was killed the following year, on July 31,
1944, along with 18 others, when his
Navy transport plane crashed while
traveling between assignments in the
South Pacific.
Despite this family hardship and great
personal loss to Colonel Cecil, he grad-
uated from SPS as a Fifth Former in 1945
and entered the Naval Academy, graduat-
ing in 1947. The
USS Charles P. Cecil
was
named in honor of Colonel Cecil’s father
and commissioned on June 29, 1945, just
two weeks after Colonel Cecil’s gradua-
tion from SPS. The younger Cecil went
on to a successful career in the U.S. Air
Force, before retiring from military
service.
Colonel Cecil settled in Greenville,
S.C., where he raised his family and
pursued a second career in commercial
banking, which became a lifelong passion.
He is survived by his wife, Elizabeth
Cecil; their four children, Cynthia, Char-
lene, Pamela, and Chuck; eight grand-
children; and five great-grandchildren.
A graveside service was held on June
20, 2014, at the historic St. John in the
Wilderness Episcopal Churchyard near
his birthplace in Flat Rock, N.C., where
there is also a memorial stone honoring
Colonel Cecil’s father.
1946
George Ortiz
died at home in Geneva, Switzerland, on
October 8, 2013, after a long illness. He
was 86.
Mr. Ortiz was born in Paris on May 10,
1927, and grew up in a grand house on
Avenue Foch. His Bolivian parents were
collectors of silver, who imparted their
love of art and craftsmanship to their
children. His father, Jorge Ortiz Linares,
was the Bolivian ambassador in Paris,
while his mother, Graziella, was the
daughter of “Tin King” Simon Patino, a
Spanish-Indian peasant who converted
a tiny stake in a tin mine into one of the
world’s great 20th-century fortunes.
Mr. Ortiz attended Harvey School in
Hawthorne, N.Y., before entering St. Paul’s
School in 1941.
Small in stature but high in energy,
he established himself as a genuine
character at the School. Mr. Ortiz played
football and hockey for Old Hundred
and rowed with Halcyon. He was a mem-
ber of Le Cercle Fran
ç
ais and the Cadmean
Literary Society. He went on to Harvard,
where he studied philosophy and dabbled
in Marxism. It was on a trip to Greece
in 1949 that Mr. Ortiz said he found him-
self looking for “God, for the truth, and
for the absolute.” He abandoned Marxism
and discovered his life’s quest of collect-
ing great works of art. Mr. Ortiz became
known for recognizing picking the best
pieces and amassed a fabulous collection,
dominated by Greek antiquities.
“I hoped that by acquiring ancient
Greek objects I would acquire the spirit
behind them,” he once recalled.
With no formal arts education, Mr. Ortiz
relied on his instinct and intuition. He
often explained that the vision of certain
objects struck him viscerally, and that “I
let them speak to me, I let their content
and spirit nourish me. I learnt by looking,
by feeling, and then reading the labels
and comparing.”
His passion and energy were renowned
in the art world, and the range and quality
of his objects were admired by many.
Along with Hellenistic art, Mr. Ortiz’s
collection included African and Oceanic
art objects. He bought his pieces from
leading dealers and auctioneers world-
wide, but often faced debates and con-
troversy about their source. He dismissed
his critics, declaring his conscience
clean. “I would not collect if I thought
what I was doing was either immoral or
amoral,” he said. “The more restrictive
laws, the more people will hide the prov-
enance. Some of these remains are the
roots of humanity and therefore should
belong to humanity.”
In 1964, Mr. Ortiz married Catherine
Haus. The couple moved to Switzerland
in 1968 and acquired an 18th-century
chateau near Lake Geneva four years
later. They spent the next two decades
restoring the manor.
DECEASED
