Lester James Wright, a former professor from Wisconsin, was shot and killed on October 27, 1922, near the Afrin bridge o...

Lester James Wright, a former professor from Wisconsin, was shot and killed on October 27, 1922, near the Afrin bridge outside Antioch, hours after delivering the last group of Greek orphans to safety in Aleppo. He was 104 years dead today, and most people have never heard his name. Wright arrived in Harput in April 1921 expecting to stay four months. He stayed for over a year and a half. Working with Near East Relief, he took charge of keeping roughly 800 children alive in Malatya while the organization prepared to move thousands of orphans out of Anatolia. He caught typhus so severe he nearly died. The nearest qualified doctor was about 60 miles away. Many of the children in his care were losing their sight. When the columns could finally move, Wright walked them himself. Groups of 100, sometimes as many as 400 children at a time, through the mountains and valleys of Anatolia to railway stations. Bandits attacked the columns mid-route. The children scattered. Wright gathered them back and kept moving. More than 5,000 children in total were being moved toward Aleppo and then onward to Syria, Lebanon, Constantinople and Greece. Among them were 100 blind children from Harput who traveled part of the route by boat on the Euphrates. On October 25, 1922, he reached Aleppo with the last group. Two days later, riding in a Ford with colleagues on the road back from Antioch, the car was ambushed around 6:15 p.m. near the Afrin bridge. The driver was wounded. Near East Relief worker Enoch Applegate was wounded. Wright was shot in the neck and killed. His body was buried in Beirut on October 30. The Greeks of Beirut sent a large delegation to the funeral. In May 1923, the Greek government posthumously awarded him the War Cross. The New York Times covered it briefly. Then the world moved on. #NearEastRelief #GreekHistory #Oxi