Book of the month: The Odyssey
I've been Homer-haunted since the winter of 1946-47, when Dad found a job
in Wolfeboro NH, bought a house on Pine Hill Road, and enrolled my brother
and me at Brewster Free Academy, one of those hermaphrodite institutions
then fairly common in northern New England. It had a small endowment from
the eponymous Mr Brewster, sufficient for it to serve as the local high school
for Wolfeboro, and over the years had acquired a dining hall and a couple
of dormitories, along with its handsome academic building, far more impressive
than the six schools we'd attended earlier.
In 1945, as millions of American soldiers were demobilized and the US Congress, fearing mass unemployment, passed the GI Bill of Rights, which among other things promised a college education for any veteran who'd served honorably during the war. Fifty or so vets came to Brewster to remedy the flaws in their high-school education, breaking Mr Brewster's endowment and obliging the academy to charge tuition for the first time. As I recall, the bill was $125, which Wolfeboro voters agreed to pay for us local kids. (Day-student tuition is now close to $45,000.)
Books from the webmaster
Cowboy: Interpreter, Soldier, Warlord, and One More Casualty of Our War in Vietnam
The Only War We've Got: Early Days in South Vietnam
Flying Tigers: Claire Chennault & His American Volunteers, 1941-1942
Tales of the Flying Tigers (the factoids that didn't make it into the book)
The Lady and the Tigers (Olga Greenlaw)
Poland's Daughter: How I Learned About Love, War, and Exile
Glen Edwards: Diary of a Bomber Pilot
A Vision So Noble: John Boyd, the OODA Loop, and America's War on Terror
The Country Northward: A Hiker's Journal
Remains: A Story of the Flying Tigers
Incident at Muc Wa: A Story of the Vietnam War
The High Country Illuminator: A Tale of Light and Darkness and the Ski Bums of Avalon
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Once or twice a month, I send out an email newsletter about my books and the subjects covered in them, most often about military aviation and the wars of the past hundred years. You can unsubscribe at any time. (If your browser spits out a Cookie warning, it's not my doing! It's Mailchimp's cookie, and I never see it.)Question? Comment? Newsletter? Send me an email. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford
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