"In January of 1942, we were listening to the radio.  TV hadn't been invented in that day.  And they interrupted a program, "Shep Fields," I believe it was.  It was a band.  And they interrupted it and said, "There is a special report that we want to give you that the Army Air Corp is in dire need of pilots.  And instead of being twenty years old and having two years of college, you can now get in with a high school diploma at eighteen.  And so I quit [State Teachers College].  I didn't even bother to call the dean and say, "I'm leaving."  And I went to Nashville the next morning.  It just so happened I had been bugging the Army Air Corp to get me in sooner and so I had a packet from the War Department and it gave me the same information that I had heard the night before.  So I went screaming down to Nashville and I found the sergeant down there that I had been bothering for a few months and I said, "Here, sign me up."