Born in Marlow, Oklahoma, into a family of five boys and four girls, John grew up in the Dust Bowl. "You see your house and whenever you walked back through you'd see your tracks on the floor," he recalls of those years. Outside he held a cloth over his face to breathe. His father, Harvey D. Cash, farmed cotton and corn, and also raised horses and cattle. The family left in 1936 for Lyford, Texas, where they grew cotton. John says the most he ever picked in a day was ninety-six pounds. When his oldest brother joined the U.S. Marine Corps in 1941, John quit school at age fourteen to help on the farm, where a cow named Hitler was part of the livestock population. He was drafted into the Marines on January 30, 1945. "I wasn't scared of Satan himself when I left Parris Island," he says of his confidence after boot camp. As member of the Third Marine Division, he helped mop up in the last fighting on Guam. Assigned to the Fifth Service Depot, he was stationed on that island nearly a year. Later he was sent to China. John returned home and was discharged in San Diego on October 18, 1946. He married Ima Jeane Blackmon of Logansport, Louisiana, on January 26, 1945. John farmed, then worked for his father-in-law's construction business. Later, in Shreveport, he worked for Berry Builders. After his first wife died he married Maxine Eckbladt, a childhood sweetheart. By his first wife he had five children, and now has fourteen grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.