News Staff
Wednesday, October 28, 2020
Body
John was born in Houston, Texas in 1923 and lived there all but two years of the next seventy years. He, his parents and his sole sibling, Manning, lived near the edge of current downtown Houston which had a population of 140,000. He still fondly recalled childhood stories and long lost friends’ names in his 90’s including simple fun like rubber gun battles, playing baseball with a single bat and ball that they re-sewed when it fell part, crawfishing in the ditches, playing tennis in the street and going to his Uncle Jim’s country home adjacent to the west side of now Memorial Park. He claimed he drove by himself to Galveston with permission when he was 14, but best we know he never otherwise ventured more than 300 miles from Houston until World War II. While he was busy growing up, his parents, grandparents and several uncles foreshadowed his future by being busy working in the burgeoning oil & gas business dating back to the city, state and world changing discovery of Spindletop near Beaumont. John graduated from San Jacinto High School in 1940. He tried to enlist for military service multiple times beginning in 1941 but was declined each time due to very poor eyesight. He graduated from Rice University in 1944, and finally, he was accepted by the U.S. Army on June 6, 1944 – yes, that was D-Day. He served mostly stateside as a 2nd Lieutenant infantry troop trainer, but then at the end of the war he saw much of the world until his service ended in 1946.
