Maxwell Chaplin

1926 - 2020

Maxwell Chaplin
Sept. 28, 1926 - Feb. 4, 2020
Resident of Carmel Valley
Maxwell Chaplin passed away on February 4, 2020, in Carmel, CA, at the age of 93. He is survived by his wife Cynthia Chaplin and was pre-deceased by his sister, the Rev. Priscilla Alden Chaplin, a 26-year resident of Yucca Valley, California, who passed away on May 14, 2006.
Maxwell Chaplin was born on September 28, 1926, in Tsinan, Shantung, China, the son of Maxwell Chaplin and Edith Kingman Chaplin, who were Presbyterian missionaries. His father, Maxwell, died of cholera several months before Max's birth.
Max's mother Edith, his sister Priscilla and Max returned to Edith's home town of Claremont, California, where her father had been pastor of the local church. Max attended local schools until entering Midland School in Los Olivos, California, where he was class president three of his four high school years.
Max attended University of California, Berkeley for one year, before joining the American Field Service to drive an ambulance with the British Eighth Army in Italy. His company finished the war with the First Army in Northern Germany, briefly working to assist the clean-up at the Belsen concentration camp.
Returning to the University of California after the war, Max chose a degree in International Relations, with the objective of joining the US Foreign Service. To cover some of his costs, Max worked as a cab driver, truck driver, or waiter while getting his degree. While taking the Foreign Service entry exams and later remedying a shortcoming in his French language facility, Max worked as a technician at the Glenn Seaborg Radiochemistry Laboratory at the University of California. This provided a background for his later interest in containment of the spread of nuclear weapons. In this period at the end of his university program, Max met and in 1949 married his wife, Cynthia Nancy Klein, who had grown up in Carmel, and encouraged his interest in returning to that area after retirement.
In 1951 the Chaplins went to Washington for the first time, where he joined his class of entering Foreign Service officers. In early 1952 he was assigned as Vice-Consul to the Consulate General in Kobe, Japan, because the responsible personnel officer thought his birth in China would provide him some insights into Japan. The tour in Kobe turned out to be an excellent initial on-the-job training opportunity. His Foreign Service career then took the couple to Caracas, Venezuela; to training at the University of Michigan; Bogota, Colombia; La Paz, Bolivia; the National War College in Washington; Quito, Ecuador; and Buenos Aires, Argentina, along with several tours at the State Department in Washington, DC. In his final assignment, Max led inspection teams to Embassies in Africa and Southeast Asia.
Following retirement, the Chaplins returned to Carmel Valley, where they had been married, purchased a lot and built their home overlooking Toro Peak. Max then began a second career in civic and environmental activities. He was a long-time member of the Carmel Valley Property Owners Association and served as its president, a member of the Sierra Club chapter local board, President of the Board of the Big Sur Land Trust, Treasurer of the Point Lobos Foundation, and a member of the Ventana Wilderness Alliance Trails Forever Campaign. He was an initial member, and ultimately President of the Carmel Valley Forum, which waged a nine-year campaign attempting to incorporate a town of Carmel Valley.


View the online memorial for Maxwell Chaplin