Eugene Patterson

[2] After the bank at which his father worked was closed in the course of the Great Depression, the family moved to a small farm near Adel, Georgia.

With his father able to get only occasional employment at local banks, the family was primarily supported by his mother's work as a teacher and her running the farm.

[3] After graduation, he served as a tank commander in the United States Army General George Patton's 10th Armored Division, 90th Cavalry Reconnaissance Squadron, First Platoon, C Troop during World War II and won a Silver Star for gallantry in action at the Battle of the Bulge and a Bronze Star with oak leaf cluster for heroic achievement.

The 10th Armored, CCB at Bastogne, held off the German Army onslaught for eight hours awaiting the arrival of the 101st Airborne Division to fully stop the offensive.

An editorial he wrote in 1963, A Flower for the Graves, was considered so moving that he was asked to read it on live television by Walter Cronkite, the leading news anchorman of the era.

[4] The editorial was in response to the notorious church bombing in Birmingham, Alabama which killed four black girls, all under the age of 15.

He was once approached by the FBI, who wanted him to write an article about Martin Luther King Jr.'s alleged infidelities which they had uncovered through wiretaps.