Education and Military Service
Faulk enrolled in the University of Texas in 1932. He became a protégé of J. Frank Dobie, Walter Prescott Webb, and Roy Bedichek, enabling Faulk to hone his skills as a folklorist. He earned a Master's degree in Folklore, with his thesis "Ten Negro Sermons". He further began to craft his oratory style as a part-time English teacher at the University 1940–1942, relating Texas folk tales peppered with his gift of character impersonations.
He was originally unfit for service with the United States Army, due to an eye problem. In 1942, Faulk joined the Merchant Marine for a one-year stint. In 1943, Faulk spent the year in Cairo, Egypt serving the American Red Cross. World War II had caused the United States Army to relax its enlistment standards, and Faulk enlisted in 1944, serving at Camp Swift, Texas as a medic. It was during this time period Faulk also joined the American Civil Liberties Union.
Read more about this topic: John Henry Faulk
Famous quotes containing the words education, military and/or service:
“As long as learning is connected with earning, as long as certain jobs can only be reached through exams, so long must we take this examination system seriously. If another ladder to employment was contrived, much so-called education would disappear, and no one would be a penny the stupider.”
—E.M. (Edward Morgan)
“Nothing changes my twenty-six years in the military. I continue to love it and everything it stands for and everything I was able to accomplish in it. To put up a wall against the military because of one regulation would be doing the same thing that the regulation does in terms of negating people.”
—Margarethe Cammermeyer (b. 1942)
“In the early forties and fifties almost everybody “had about enough to live on,” and young ladies dressed well on a hundred dollars a year. The daughters of the richest man in Boston were dressed with scrupulous plainness, and the wife and mother owned one brocade, which did service for several years. Display was considered vulgar. Now, alas! only Queen Victoria dares to go shabby.”
—M. E. W. Sherwood (1826–1903)