Beyond Magnolias: My First 30 Years

The opening chapter of this book tells of a boy who lost his father at the age of two and went with his mother and seven siblings to live with their maternal grandparents in Southwest Louisiana. Confronted with a huge increase in the size of his family, the boy's grandfather established a dairy farm, called Magnolia Dairy, and put his grandkids to work earning their keep while attending the nearby consolidated school. The author portrays this life as contributing to his own internal discipline as well as sustaining the family through the Great Depression. A second chapter chronicles the family's antecedents from Revolutionary America to the present. As the boy reaches adulthood World War II looms. He joins the Air Corps and trains for work as a radio and control tower operator. After Pearl Harbor and a failed attempt to become an Air Force pilot he rejoins his radio squadron and is eventually sent to China. His wartime experience with new and different cultures abroad inspires him further his education at LSU and Yale and prepare himself for a diplomatic career, a story that he has told in A Farm Boy in the Foreign Service, 1st Books Library, 2003.