Career
Batt enlisted in the service on his 17th birthday in 1944; with a brother-in-law killed at Guadalcanal (and a brother who later lost an arm at Okinawa), he aimed to be a fighter pilot to avenge the damage to his family.
Still not eighteen, he briefly attended the University of Idaho in Moscow in north Idaho, then entered the Army Air Forces in 1945 and was in basic training during V-J Day.
With the war over, fighter pilots were not needed so Batt served sixteen months at Lowry Field in Denver as a clerk, discharging veterans before being discharged himself. He then returned to the UI and studied chemical engineering, lived in the dorms, and led a dance band, playing clarinet and tenor saxophone.
A year later in January 1948, he eloped with Jacque Fallis of Spokane, a member of the Delta Delta Delta sorority. The newlyweds had to leave school a month later when Batt's 66 year-old father was involved in a serious automobile accident which left him with limited strength and speech. Though the young Batts initially hoped to return to college, economic circumstances changed their plans and they reluctantly did not.
Read more about this topic: Phil Batt
Famous quotes containing the word career:
“From a hasty glance through the various tests I figure it out that I would be classified in Group B, indicating “Low Average Ability,” reserved usually for those just learning to speak the English Language and preparing for a career of holding a spike while another man hits it.”
—Robert Benchley (1889–1945)
“It is a great many years since at the outset of my career I had to think seriously what life had to offer that was worth having. I came to the conclusion that the chief good for me was freedom to learn, think, and say what I pleased, when I pleased. I have acted on that conviction... and though strongly, and perhaps wisely, warned that I should probably come to grief, I am entirely satisfied with the results of the line of action I have adopted.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)
“Like the old soldier of the ballad, I now close my military career and just fade away, an old soldier who tried to do his duty as God gave him the light to see that duty. Goodbye.”
—Douglas MacArthur (1880–1964)