7/14/1942 – 10/22/2025
Atlanta
Chuck always said he was born under a wandering star. Charles Arthur Marvin, 83, died October 22, in Atlanta, Georgia, where he had lived since 1985.
Born in Chicago on July 14, 1942, to Margaret (Medlar) and Burton Marvin, he grew up in Lawrence, Kansas. Before attending the University of Kansas, he spent a year with his family in Teheran, Iran, his first time living abroad. After his undergraduate degree, he studied at the university in Toulouse, France, as a Fullbright scholar. He earned two degrees in law at the University of Chicago.
During a post-graduate year in Brussels, where he interned with the Common Market, he met his first wife, and they lived a year in England before returning to North America. He lived in several provinces in Canada, teaching law and working for the Canadian government, and there they had two children, Colin and Kristin.
He returned to the US and taught at Villanova and later at Georgia State. In 1993, shortly after the fall of the Soviet Union, he worked for a semester in Kazakhstan and Bulgaria. He was awarded another Fullbright to teach in 2000-2001 at the new, west-oriented Riga Graduate School of Law, and he and Betsy, whom he married in 1999, forged ties in Latvia that lasted the rest of his life, returning to teach several times, and vacationing there nearly every year. They hosted tour groups of friends and wandered all over the Baltics.
He estimated that he’d visited some 70 countries.
Chuck’s wide knowledge of history, politics, art, and other cultural fields and his gentle manner and sweet smile endeared him to many. He is survived by his wife Betsy Wilson Marvin, children, Colin (Vicky) of Ottawa, Canada, Kristin, of Vancouver, Canada, his brother Bob (Patricia) of Saint Louis, and sister Anne of Lawrence. Also surviving are his namesake grandson, Charlie, and stepsons Michael Gregory Branden (Robyn) of Lawrence and Nicholas Marshall of Asheville, NC.
Each one of these along with a host of friends and travel mates will miss him dearly.
Note: The Lawrence Times is offering Lawrence and Douglas County community members space to publish remembrances of loved ones who lived in this community, free of charge. These pieces are submitted by family and friends of the deceased and not written by our staff. Photos are also provided to the publication, and some may have been altered prior to submission. Read more obituaries here.
We are honored to be able to offer this service free to community members in mourning. We believe the last thing our neighbors need in those difficult moments is another financial matter to worry about. Please support the Times to help us continue providing this service — and news access — for all.
To submit an obituary to The Lawrence Times, please fill out the form at this link. We’re sorry, but we cannot accept obituary submissions via email or other means.
Receive obituaries via email
As of May 2026, we are launching a newsletter that will include obituaries only. Obituaries will no longer appear in our daily emails. You can sign up below to receive any and all of our emails. If you already receive our daily, weekly and/or occasional emails and you want to keep receiving them, please check those boxes as well.
Please make sure you click on the button that says “Yes, subscribe me to this list” in the email you receive or you will not receive future emails. That extra step is to protect you and make sure you’re not getting emails you don’t want.
