Background
Turner was born in Corinth, Mississippi, the eldest son of a poor but respectable farmer. He came to realize that he did not want to be a farmer and found that he was attracted to mechanical devices instead. He was an inveterate tinkerer with automobiles until he discovered aircraft in 1913. Here he found his calling. When America entered World War I, he applied for pilot training but was turned down because he did not have a college education (he had reached tenth grade before dropping out). Because of his background with automobiles, he was given driver duties in the Army. As the need for pilots grew, the education requirements were lowered and he was trained to be a balloon observer. Privately, however, he was able to receive aircraft pilot training. He was discharged as a First Lieutenant in 1919. With his discharge payment, he purchased a surplus aircraft and spent the 1920s "barnstorming".
Read more about this topic: Roscoe Turner
Famous quotes containing the word background:
“They were more than hostile. In the first place, I was a south Georgian and I was looked upon as a fiscal conservative, and the Atlanta newspapers quite erroneously, because they didn’t know anything about me or my background here in Plains, decided that I was also a racial conservative.”
—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)
“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)
“Silence is the universal refuge, the sequel to all dull discourses and all foolish acts, a balm to our every chagrin, as welcome after satiety as after disappointment; that background which the painter may not daub, be he master or bungler, and which, however awkward a figure we may have made in the foreground, remains ever our inviolable asylum, where no indignity can assail, no personality can disturb us.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)