Charles Edward Fuller
1887 – 1968

Charles E. Fuller was born April 25, 1887. After graduating magna cum laude from Pomona College, he married Grace Payton and ventured into the fruitpacking business. Fuller was converted in 1917 when he went to the Church of the Open Door in Los Angeles to hear Paul Rader preach. The next year the Fullers traveled as itinerant missionaries to the remote villages of the Western states.

Fuller left the fruitpacking business and entered the Bible Institute of Los Angeles. He became a renowned Bible teacher in his community and formed a church from a small Bible class which he served for ten years. From the sanctuary of Calvary Church of Placentia, California, Fuller launched his radio ministry in 1925 over a single local radio station. He later became director of “The Old-Fashioned Revival Hour.” The broadcast’s joyful format gained immediate acceptance and enabled it to expand rapidly to other stations.

During the 1940s Fuller also directed a large number of evangelists in many parts of North America through the Fuller Evangelistic Foundation. Meanwhile the Gospel Broadcasting Association continued to expand the Old Fashioned Revival Hour’s coverage from North America to almost every spot on the globe. For fifteen years, beginning with World War II, the program was produced each Sunday afternoon from the Municipal Auditorinm in Long Beach, California, where it drew huge audiences. At the time of Dr. Fuller’s death in March 1968, the broadcast was heard on more than five hundred stations around the world.