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AUTHOR'S BIOGRAPHY

 I am Walter Franklin Hughes, second of four boys and a tag end girl of Willis and Minnie Hughes. We were mostly of English and Welsh ancestry with some Scotch and German included along the way.  Dad owned a small English walnut farm.

 

I was born in January 1922, two years after brother Elmer and 18 months before George. 

         

I started school in the brand new Goleta elementary school in Feb. 1928, Transferred to Cabrillo Jr. Hi. In 1936 and graduated from Santa Barbara High school in Feb 1940, the last of the mid-year classes.  The work requirement of the growing dairy kept us from extra-curricular activities in high school.  I did play tenor sax in the marching band and took military science instead of gymnastics, an activity that later influenced my decision not to be drafted into the army.

 

Dad had to find work off the farm so each of the boys was driving the small caterpillar tractor by the time we were eight.  4-H club work began the year I was 8.  Our first projects were laying chickens.   The year was 1930, the egg price in 1931- 32 was 8 cents per dozen.  Because the cost of feed was more than we could make from the eggs, we couldn’t continue to feed the chickens. 

 

We had lots of grass and each boy got a heifer calf annually beginning in 1931.  In the spring of 1940, the first year it was awarded, I was named one of California’s 4 – “Diamond All Star” members.

         

When I graduated from High school in Feb 1940 I took over the dairy management from older brother Elmer and he went off to College at Davis Ca.  The dairy supported him.  In Sept 1941 George graduated from high school, he took over the dairy and I joined Elmer at college.         

December 7 1941 changed our world.  By summer 1942, Elmer was already drafted, George was in the navy and my draft date was announced.  By 1942 Hughes Bros. dairy owned 52 head of dairy stock, but that year we had to sell them because 3 of us were called to military service.  To avoid being drafted into the army, I volunteered for Air Force pilot training.

         

My military career is chronicled in my book.  I credit the discipline learned in my growing years for getting me through the intense pressure of pilot training.

         

I had already intended to study Veterinary Medicine when I first went to Davis.  The school was not yet opened and the war set the plans back to its opening in 1948.  By that time I had already earned a BS in Animal Husbandry but was still honored to be one of 42 students chosen out of 600 applicants to be a member of that first UC Davis veterinary class.

         

After graduating I wanted to work with farm animals but even then making a living as an agricultural animal veterinarian was not economically practical.

 

After 2 years in a general practice an opportunity came to work with poultry.   I had worked the last 2 years of vet school in the poultry veterinary department as a technician and learned to appreciate the birds.  That led to 30 years working in the poultry industry in all areas of poultry medicine, research, husbandry, nutrition, housing and management.

         

After retirement I started working on recording my memories of the war which became the book. Since 1991 I have been a volunteer for the Collings Foundation. Their purpose is to preserve living aviation history with their "Wings of Freedom" tour of WWII aircraft.

         

If I had to pick one message for readers go home with is that war destroys our finite environment, degrades the human gene pool by killing the fittest and does not address the basis of the conflict. War is a power play between human egos. War is not the path to humane evolution.

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