About Tom

In January of 1939, about 5 AM on a rainy Saturday morning, I was born in the small community of Woodsbend, near West Liberty, in Morgan County, Kentucky. My life began just as World War II was in it’s beginning stages. Our family did not know then how those rumblings of war would impact us later. The first five years of my life was a carefree normal loving parent, child relationship. But when my father’s draft notice came that October day in 1943, it signaled the start of everything changing. That ominous notification would cause our family to put our lives on hold… while my father served our country.

I was not aware of it at the time, but this was the beginning of a process that would change my life forever. Dad received a short reprieve from the draft to await the arrival of his third child. The middle of February, 1944, my little brother arrived. According to the terms of my father’s reprieve, six weeks after my brother’s birth, he had to report for the draft. He only lasted eight months from his induction, March 30th, 1944, until his death, November 14th, 1944. My father’s wartime death changed everything.

I attended the first five grades of school in West Liberty, Kentucky. Then when I was eleven my mother moved the family thirty five miles north of Cincinnati to Middletown, a medium size southwestern Ohio city. I enrolled in the sixth grade of the public school system there, and graduated from high school in 1957. I met my wife to be Deloris M. McFarland that summer, and a year later we were married. After forty nine years we have three sons and six grandchildren.

Since retirement I have spent most of my time learning about my father, being an author, and publishing my two books: I Can Hear The Guns Now - A World War II Story of Love and Sacrifice and Now I Know - A War Orphan‘s Journey of Discovery.