Early Career
Born in Topeka, Kansas to Harry Victor Felt and the former Grace Greenwood Johnson, Felt attended public school in Goodland, Kansas before moving with his family to Washington, D.C. at the age of ten. Lacking money for college, Felt entered a cram school for the U.S. Naval Academy and was appointed to the academy in 1919. At the Academy, Felt received good marks but graduated in 1923 with the unremarkable class rank of 152 out of 413, having accumulated almost as many demerits as anyone in his class.
As a junior officer, Felt served five years aboard the battleship Mississippi and the destroyer Farenholt before applying for flight training out of sheer boredom. From then on, naval aviation was his life. While training at Naval Air Station Pensacola from 1928 to 1929, Felt met his future wife, Kathryn Cowley, whom he married on August 3, 1929 after warning her that the Navy would always come first. She later reported that even as a newlywed, Felt's life was "just fly, fly, fly."
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