My dad, Johnnie H. Chambers, has always been my hero, but he was a World War II hero, too.

He joined the U.S. Army partly to join the war effort and partly to escape the cotton fields and poverty of Mississippi. During the Great Depression, the Chambers family struggled to survive. They were forced to work as sharecroppers picking cotton in the Mississippi Delta. Some days his family of seven had little to eat and my grandma resorted to begging for food so they wouldn’t go hungry.

Dad wanted to play sports in school but couldn’t because he was needed to work. He left high school before graduating to join the U.S. Army at age 17. The Army was a good fit for him and provided the first new suit of clothing and shoes he had ever worn in his life.

Chambers had a great personality and was a hard worker, so he quickly rose up in the ranks. He was the leader of his platoon and was a sergeant at only 18 years old. He eventually became a flight officer in the U.S. Air Force, part of the 9th Bombardment Group. He flew in a B-29 Superfortress and boasted about flying many missions over Japan while based on the island of Tinian. He and his crew were awarded The Distinguished Flying Cross and several other medals.

I was born six years after the end of World War II but I heard plenty about it from my dad as I was growing up. He had scrapbooks, photos and memorabilia from the war, most of which I still have today. His flight crew had yearly reunions in different parts of the country to celebrate each other and winning the war.

America’s victory was a turning point in prosperity for the country and for my dad. In 1945, he married my mom while on leave in McCook, Nebraska. My older brother, Larry, was born that year, too. After the war’s end, he brought his new family home to Louisiana, where his parents had moved during the war. There, Dad was celebrated as a war hero and was offered a job as a safety inspector at Exxon’s new refinery in Baton Rouge. He worked there for 33 years and retired in 1979 with a nice pension. He died of heart disease and a stroke 10 years later. My parents were married for 44 years.

For my dad, the war and the military were the stepping-stones that lifted him to prosperity. He laughed when people talked about “the good old’ days” because, to him, the past was a nightmare and life after the war was considerably better.

At the same time that he was clawing his way out of poverty, the U.S. was also beginning to recover economically. In the same way that the military lifted him up, America’s World War II victory jumpstarted the country after the Depression. After the war, people had jobs again. The victory was a catalyst for new beginnings at home and abroad.

“The greatest generation” led America to greatness at home and to big changes around the world. I like to say that while my dad was saving the world, the war was saving him.