Early Years, Education, Military
Rollins was born to Joseph Guy Rollins and the former Ethel Stratton in Merit in Hunt County near Dallas at the home of his maternal grandparents, Robert B. Stratton and the former Julia Hardy. Rollins graduated from Thomas Jefferson High School in San Antonio. In 1938, he completed his bachelor's degree at Texas A&M University in College Station. He thereafter earned his law degree in 1941 from Southern Methodist University in Dallas.
During World War II, Rollins enlisted in the United States Navy even before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. From 1943–1945, he was the commanding officer of the U.S.S. Curlew AM 69. In October 1943, he directed a group of minesweepers that successfully cleared the Caribbean entrance to the Panama Canal of German submarine-laid naval mines which had shut down the waterway for two critical weeks of the war. Rollins received a letter of commendation for his "fine seamanship under difficult conditions". After the war, Rollins was active in the Naval Reserve for eleven years and was commanding officer of the Reserve Electronics Unit in Sherman in north Texas.
Read more about this topic: Joe Rollins
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or military:
“In the true sense one’s native land, with its background of tradition, early impressions, reminiscences and other things dear to one, is not enough to make sensitive human beings feel at home.”
—Emma Goldman (1869–1940)
“Who are we? And for what are we going to fight? Are we the titled slaves of George the Third? The military conscripts of Napoleon the Great? Or the frozen peasants of the Russian Czar? No—we are the free born sons of America; the citizens of the only republic now existing in the world; and the only people on earth who possess rights, liberties, and property which they dare call their own.”
—Andrew Jackson (1767–1845)