Born on "the old place," a family farm in Ward Eight of Ouachita Parish, John entered the U.S. Navy in November of 1942. He was assigned to landing craft school, and then sent overseas to Espirtu Santo in February of 1944. He was assigned to a tug, the USS Bobolink (ATO-131), from which he ran the captain's "jig", a small ship-to-shore boat. The tug hauled ships in the Pacific and across it. It towed the Billy Williams, a liberty ship, from Fiji to Aukland, New Zealand; an oil tanker, the Mobolu to Sydney; and the destroyer, USS Foote (DD-511), to Long Beach, California, a trip that took sixty days. Given a choice of staying aboard the Bobolink or going to advanced gunner's mate school, he chose the school. In October of 1944, the Navy shipped him to Miami where he was working as an instructor in gunnery when the war ended. "My job there died like you shot it with a gun," he says. John was discharged on November 2, 1945. He joined Trailways in 1948 and remained with the transportation company for thirty-eight years.