John Desmond - Early Years, Education, Military

Early Years, Education, Military

Desmond was born in Denver, Colorado, to Timothy J. Desmond and the former Rose Isabelle Dvorak (1886–1982), but he lived most of his life in Hammond and Baton Rouge. He graduated from Hammond High School in 1937 and thereafter procured his Bachelor of Architecture degree from Tulane. He obtained a Master of Architecture from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, where he studied under the American Institute of Architects gold medal winners William Wurster and Alvar Aalto, a native of Finland.

During World War II, Desmond served in the United States Navy as an ensign aboard the destroyer USS Madison, which escorted convoys across the Atlantic. He saw action in the Battle of Anzio, Italy, in the Mediterranean. After the war, upon finishing his education, he worked for Skidmore Owings & Merrill in New York City, architect A. Hays Town in Baton Rouge, and for the Tennessee Valley Authority in Knoxville, Tennessee. In 1953, he returned to Hammond to open the first architectural practice in the Florida Parishes of southeastern Louisiana. He was the Tangipahoa Parish School Board architect for some twenty years.