Seeing Through It

About the Book

About the Author

Born in 1918, I survived the great flu epidemic of that year. As the son of a church organist and choir director, I had more than my share of church, Sunday school, and vacation Bible school attendance. During the World War II I served in the Army Air Corps and flew bombing missions with a B-25 squadron in the CBI (China-Burma-India) Theater of Operations. Immediately after the war, flew (as navigator) with the Pacific Division, Air Transport Command (ATC), which included a prolonged stay in China---that impressed me deeply. I left the service (now, the U.S. Air Force) in 1954 with the rank of captain. I received a BA from San Francisco State. I had joined the Marines out of high school and served during the time of James Jones’ “From Here to Eternity,” when pay was next to nothing. This is significant to my book, because it concerned my religious education. The Army-Navy YMCA offered a free coffee-and-doughnuts social hour, which I often attended out of boredom. The catch: we were honor-bound to attend an evening church service afterward, which some fellows ducked. But I kept the bargain and learned a lot about human nature, which in time became the subject of my book—which in turn tells a lot about me.