Growing up, Jay Karr's neighbor - University of Iowa football star Nile Kinnick - was his hero. So when the Heisman Trophy winner and All-American enlisted in the U.S. Navy in 1941 to become a fighter pilot, Karr wanted nothing more than to follow in his footsteps.
"I wanted to do everything he did," Karr said.
As soon as he turned 18 in 1944, Karr attempted to follow in Kinnick's footsteps.
Unfortunately, his vision - 20/100 in one eye, 20/200 in the other - was so poor he couldn't get into the Navy. Or the Army, the Marines or the Coast Guard.
"They took me on special services - cooks and bakers school, I called it," Karr said. "Then came the winter of 1944, and the Battle of the Bulge had us in desperate straights ... so I went in the draft and went to infantry training."
While in basic training at Camp Robinson, Arkansas, Karr decided to try one more time to qualify to join the paratroopers. Once again, the big stumbling block was his vision - the minimum eye rating was 20/30 vision in both eyes, and he wouldn't be able to use the G.I. glasses he'd been given.
So Karr took the only option open to him to achieve his dream. He cheated.
Karr, who was taller than some of his fellow recruits, looked over the heads of the men in front of him and memorized the letters - a trick he had to perform several times before he was able to secure his much-wanted assignment.
Asked why getting into the paratroopers was so important to him, Karr repeated that he wanted to be like Kinnick.
"I wanted to follow my next door neighbor into flying ... that was the nearest thing to it I could even have a wish for it," Karr said.
Karr went to Ft. Benning, Georgia for four weeks of paratroop training. The first week consisted of physical training and learning to pack a parachute; week two was "more "chute packing" and training on a 300-foot tower; week three involved climbing a 34-foot tower with a mock plane at the top, hooking up a harness and jumping out the door; week four was five jumps - "you pack your parachute in the morning and jump in the afternoon."
Karr said one of the training demonstrations intended to reassure trainees was a demonstration of the emergency parachute, which was designed so that it could be deployed at 300 feet and still allow the jumper to land safely. A dummy strapped into an emergency parachute was "jumped" from the 300-foot tower with the expectation it would land safely in front of the paratroopers-in-training.
Unfortunately, the demonstration for Karr and his compatriots didn't quite have the intended effect.
"He released (the dummy), but something happened and the parachute did not deploy," Karr said. "The dummy landed right in front of us, bounced, and sawdust went everywhere. We were all about ready to quit right then."
Karr stuck with it though, and said it was worth it.
"Jumping is the most thrilling experience of your life," he said. "At the time of the jump, you stand up, check your equipment, you hook up and you head out the door. At that time you're so worked up that you're just desperate to get out of the plane."
Once out of the plane and your parachute opens, Karr said, "from that time on it's just breathtaking."
"You look at your feet and see plowed fields or a forest ... it's not like anything else. It's very exhilarating," he said. "It's hard to keep the guys from congratulating each other in the air. It is fun; great fun."
On June 1, 1945, Karr made his qualifying jump. After some leave, Karr and his unit were sent by train to Ft. Ord in California. A few mornings after arriving, they woke up to jubilant headlines in the San Francisco paper - the first of the atomic bombs had been dropped on Japan. Japan surrendered shortly after, and Karr said he and his unit all assumed they would be going home.
"But within a week we knew we were headed to the Philippines," Karr said. "It took us 23 days to get to Manila because we were zigzagging - an American cruiser had disappeared in the weeks after the bomb ... it put our command on warning."
Karr, who had qualified as a flutist and played the flute and saxophone in the band, was eventually sent to Sendai, north of Tokyo, as part of the occupying force.
"It was an entirely tranquil, entirely peaceful occupation. There wasn't any burying bombs under roads or suicide bombers," Karr said. "I had a very uneventful service over there. We were treated very well by the Japanese that were left.
"Possibly because the Japanese had had enough of war, and also because the occupation was run by Gen. Douglas MacArthur - he knew the Orient, and he knew the Philippines and he was a very good leader."
He said MacArthur "ran a tight ship."
"If you did anything wrong against the Japanese and his MP's got hold of you, you knew you were going to jail," Karr said.
Karr served until November 1946, at which point he went to school at Drake University. He worked as a book editor for "Better Homes and Gardens" for several years before returning to school at the University of Iowa to get his master's degree in creative writing.
Karr then taught at the University of Idaho and Humboldt State College (now University) before accepting a position in the English department at Westminster College in 1965.
Karr said he received a letter from then-acting dean of faculty John Randolph the spring before he was set to join the faculty telling him that the novel "King's Row" had been written by a Fulton native and was supposed to be an accurate reflection of the town - perhaps Karr should read it before deciding he wanted to moving here.
"I read it, but I still wanted to come," Karr said. "It turned out to be a pretty nice town after all."
In 2005, Karr wrote a book based on his experiences during the war, "Leaving the Home Front." It is available at the Kingdom of Callaway Historical Society in Fulton. Well Read also sometimes carries copies.