Early Life, Military Service and Family
Hensley was born in San Antonio, Texas to Jessie and James L. Hensley. The family was poor and the father an alcoholic. They lived in the South until moving to Arizona; Hensley graduated from Phoenix Union High School in 1936. He married Mary Jeanne Parks, his high school sweetheart, around 1937, and worked as a paper salesman.
Hensley and his older brother, Eugene, first began working in the liquor distribution business before World War II, being in the employ of Kemper Marley, Sr., an Arizona rancher who had become wealthy in that business in Phoenix and Tucson following the end of Prohibition. The brothers started the United Liquor Co. in Phoenix and the United Distribution Co. in Tucson.
Jim Hensley then served three years as an officer in the United States Army Air Forces during World War II. He was a bombardier on B-17 Flying Fortresses. On his thirteenth mission, his plane was shot down over the English Channel; around the same time, his wife gave birth to their daughter, Kathleen Anne Hensley, in February 1943. In all, his planes were shot down two or three times. He was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross.
Hensley was injured during his service, and sent to a West Virginia medical facility to recover. There he met Marguerite "Smitty" Johnson (born Cairo, Illinois, January 16, 1919, died Scottsdale, Arizona, October 11, 2006, daughter of Swedish American parents), who had one daughter, Dixie, from a previous relationship. Hensley divorced his wife, and shortly thereafter married Marguerite on March 29, 1945 in Memphis, Tennessee while on leave from the USAAF. They would have one child together, Cindy Lou Hensley, born 1954. Hensley's first daughter grew up with her mother, but he maintained occasional contact with her.
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