| George B. Fitch | |
|---|---|
| Occupation | Businessman, Politician |
George B. Fitch is a business consultant and Republican politician. He is the mayor of Warrenton, Virginia, and ran in the 2005 Republican primary for the governorship of Virginia, a race which he lost to Jerry Kilgore. Having long had ties to Jamaica, Fitch was one of the co-founders of the Jamaican Bobsled Team for the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary. Determined to achieve what most dismissed as impossible, Fitch's success inspired the Disney film Cool Runnings. In 2007 he proposed that his city generate all of its energy from methane released from a nearby landfill.[1]
Fitch was born of a missionary family in Canton, China, during the Chinese Revolution. His father had served with the OSS behind the lines during the Japanese invasion and with Chenault's Flying Tigers. His grandfather George Ashmore Fitch, who came to China in 1906 to follow his father as a missionary, was the Provost and YMCA Nanking Safety Zone International Committee Administrative Director in Nanking during the Rape of Nanking. He wrote a book, My Eighty Years in China. George was raised in the Far East through to his first two years of college at the University of Singapore. He graduated with a B.A. in Economics from the College of Wooster, Ohio, and earned an MBA in International Business from George Washington University. He speaks several languages.