F. (Fred) Eugene Barber was born on a sharecrop farm in the Midwest at the start of the Great Depression and first attended a rural school with nine other students ranging from the first to the sixth grades. He trapped for furs, hunted, fished, worked on farms and ranches mending barbed wire fences, branding cattle, and vaccinating calves until joining the Air Force just after graduating from high school at age seventeen. During the Korean War, he was an engine mechanic on B-29 bombers for a short time on Pusan Airfield, Korea and then later, a Crew Chief and Line Chief assigned to the 5th Fie...