This is my story about growing up in Illinois during World War II. A story during the greatest era ever, when men and women made the ultimate sacrifices of all time. This is a story about how an uneducated high school drop-out elevated himself from a Common Labor to a Design Engineer, learned to fly an airplane, and obtaining a flight instrument rating. A story of Travels to Europe, our favorite being Normandy, France, and Paris. I would like to share my tribulations with anyone interested in life growing up during the 1940s and 1950s in a Midwest town of Geneseo, IL. You can do anything that you want in life if you just put your mind to it! I have always been a perfectionist, which caused me great difficulty in writing my memoir. At first, I struggled with putting down my memories because I felt that my words were not good enough for anyone to read without being turned off. After several weeks of writing, I decided that I should not write to perfection. I should just put in words the failures that I had endured in my life and what I had actually accomplished. It was very easy to determine my failures because I had many. But I had also accomplished much more in life than I had ever dreamed that I would. The thing that motivated me the most in writing my memoir was that I did not want to lose the memory of my life history. I felt that while growing older I would begin to lose the memory of all the happy times that had happened during my lifetime. I also wanted to document everything that I could think of to share my entire life with my wife Mary, my sisters, my children, and stepchildren. During the process of my writings, I learned a lot about myself. As I proceeded to write chapter by chapter, I began to realize that my life was full of sorrow and happiness. I had forgotten many things that had happened during my life until I wrote down my memories on paper. I would like to thank my wife, Mary, for her encouragement, and support for me to write my memoir. I would usually write a chapter and then have Mary read it and give me the feedback that I needed to make it more legible. I lost track of how long it took for me to write my memoir, but I know that it was over several months. Some days I would spend all day writing; but then at times, I would go for a week or more without doing anything. I would like to share my tribulations with anyone interested in life growing up during the 1940s and 1950s. Many modern-day scholars think that the greatest genera