The younger brother of Alex Booras, Dan was in Highland Hospital in Shreveport. As a youngster he sold magazines and bagged groceries at the A&P. "They would pay us in soup bones and chicken livers, and they'd give us a dollar," he recalls. "We got out and hustled and we made it the hard way." Their father died when Dan was ten, and their mother in 1940 when he was fifteen. Dan graduated from both CE Byrd High School and Greek school at his church, Saint George Greek Orthodox. He joined the U.S. Army in August of 1944 and was sent to radar and cryptographic school at the University of Texas. Ordered to the Pacific, he was shipped to Milne Bay, New Guinea, where he served in the 232^nd Signal Operations Air, a unit attached to the Thirty-Second Infantry Division. As a staff sergeant, Dan handled switchboard operations and telephones. Many in his outfit, he says, had worked for Southern Bell and were older men in their 30s. After New Guinea, Dan served in the campaign for the Philippines, first on Leyte, and then on Luzon. When he arrived at Yokohoma at war's end, he recalls, "there wouldn't be a Jap in sight. They all were scared to come out. But they gave us a bunch of Hershey's bars and the kids started coming out. And we would give them Hershey's bars." Dan was discharged on February 2, 1946, at Camp Fannin near Tyler, Texas. After the war he owned Caliburger's Drive-In and Danny's Drive-In, and then went to work for Farmers Seafood.