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CHAPTER 1

Preparation

I

was born just prior to World War II at, appropriately for one who would
become a military officer, an army airbase in Michigan. My mother, Alta
Duncan, was the product of a pioneering family of Scot, Irish, and
Cherokee heritage, with roots in the Deep South. My father, Ernest
Young, was originally from northern Indiana, but then his father took an
engineering professorship at Oklahoma A&M (now Oklahoma State) Uni-
versity in Stillwater, where my parents met and married. By  my fa-
ther was serving overseas and had become a highly decorated fighter pilot
in what was then the U.S. Army Air Corps. He was killed in , while we
were living at an air base in Oregon. After his death we moved back to Okla-
homa. My mother held a college degree and placed a high value on educa-
tion, so we eventually settled in Oklahoma City, where she felt my younger
brother and I would receive a good education in the public schools. Mother
remarried in  to a young lawyer, G. M. Fuller, who later became one of
Oklahoma City’s most prominent citizens. He was my Dad from that time
on, a special person and role model, and our family life was generally har-
monious.
I was a little wild in high school, having a weakness for pretty girls, mo-
torcycles, fast cars, hunting and fishing (sometimes pursued while classes
were in session), and an occasional . beer, the only alcoholic beverage
legally available in Oklahoma at the time. Yet I managed to make the var-
sity wrestling team and to perform rather well in English, Latin (those be-
ing the days when public schools really provided an education), and history.
I went on to attend the University of Oklahoma, graduating in  with a
major in political science and minors in English and history.
Originally set on becoming a lawyer, I soon discovered that I was not fond
of law school and left after a year and a half. While an undergraduate, I had
taken four years of ROTC, the first two because they were required at all land-
grant colleges, the last two because of the urging of my parents and the
thirty-dollar monthly salary, a decent sum in those days. At the time, nearly
all young men had to serve in the military, and the choice was between be-