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John Hester
John Hester was raised in the small central Florida town of Inverness. He graduated from the University of South Florida in Tampa in 1965 with a degree in physical education.
Afte...view moreJohn Hester was raised in the small central Florida town of Inverness. He graduated from the University of South Florida in Tampa in 1965 with a degree in physical education.
After teaching school for one year, he served in the U.S. Army for two years, from September 1966 to September 1968. He took basic training at Fort Benning, Georgia, was then stationed for 10 months at Hunter Liggett Military Reservation in California, and finally served 11 months in Vietnam—the first five months as a clerk-typist at 18th Engineer Brigade Headquarters in Dong Ba Thin, next to Cam Rahn Bay, and the second six months as an information specialist at 937th Combat Engineer Group Headquarters in Pleiku in the Central Highlands.
During his time in the Army, he had the Forrest Gump-like experience of witnessing firsthand two major events of the turbulent 1960s: he visited San Francisco several times during the summer of 1967, which subsequently became known as “the Summer of Love,” and he was in Vietnam the night in January 1968 when the enemy's Tet Offensive began.
After being discharged from the Army, he spent a year writing a novel, for which he could not find a publisher, and then embarked on what was to be a 45-year career as a reporter/photographer/editor for small weekly newspapers.
This book is a collection of some of the commentaries he wrote in his editorial-page column over the years. Most of his commentaries were about local matters, of specific interest to the community in which the newspaper was located, but all of these are of a more universal scope.view less
Books by John Hester
A Collection of (Mostly) Rather Eccentric Commentaries and the Night the Tet Offensive Began