Tragedy In Paradise : A Country Doctor At War In Laos
Charles Weldon was born in the tiny lumbering town of St. James, Louisiana in 1920.  His mother died when he was nine years old, and he was raised by an older sister in San Angelo, Texas.  After high school, he attended Texas Agricultural and Mechanical College and studied petroleum chemical engineering.  He spent five years in the United States Marine Corps during World War II as an infantry officer, and fought in the Pacific theater against the Japanese.  After World War II, he entered medical school in New Orleans, and graduated from Louisiana State University School of Medicine in 1951.  He also has a post graduate degree in International Health from the Harvard University School of Public Health. His medial career started in pediatrics, but after one year he went into general practice in a rural area of Southern Louisiana.  In addition to the eleven years he spent in Laos, Dr. Weldon has also lived and worked in Haiti, the Philippines, Cambodia, South Vietnam, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, and Thailand.  He retired to Chiang Rai, a small provincial capital and farming center in Northern Thailand in 1987.