Jack Lee Ferguson

JACK LEE FERGUSON, born in Compton, California; m. YVONNE MABEL LINDORES, in Los Angeles at Glen Manor Place; born in Victoria, British Columbia.

I was born in Compton, California. We moved to Hawthorne, California in 1932 where my earliest memories include my grandmother Minnie and my grandfather, John Alexander Ferguson. After attending Hawthorne Elementary school for about eight years, we moved to Gardena, CA where I attended Junior and Senior high school until I enlisted in the navy.

In the Navy I was sent to the Mariana and Marshall Islands. I was discharged from the Navy in February of 1948 and then attended the University of Hawaii for a semester. After that, I enlisted in the Army in August of that year, and was sent to Ft. Ord, Ca for refresher training.

While apprehending and bringing back a prisoner from Davis Montran Airbase in Tuscon, AZ, I was coming back on the San Joaquin Daylight Train in CA when I met Yvonne Lindores on the train. I was nineteen and she was seventeen. From Ft. Ord I was sent to Ft. Riley, Kansas and from there to Ft. Lee, VA. At Ft. Lee in 1950 the Korean War began in June of 1950 and I was shipped to Korea in August of that year. I served until April 1952, in Korea, and then was transferred to Camp Roberts, CA.

I married Yvonne on April 16,  and we went on a honeymoon to Northern California and the Yosemite area. From there we went to our new assignment at Ft. Huachuca, AZ. The weather was so hot there I put in for a transfer to reserve duty, and was transferred to the Reserves for duty in Reno, NV in September of 1952. Our first child, Holly was born at the Presidio (Letterman Hospital). Early in 1954 we were transferred to Las Vegas, where we stayed until after our son Scot was born (at Ft. Ord, CA). From there I was transferred to Monterey, CA, where I attended the language school to learn Chinese-Mandarin. I graduated in November 1955 and was sent back to Korea, while Yvonne, Holly & Scot went to live with Yvonne's parents in the Atwater district of LA.

My first trip to Korea was as a refrigerator mechanic. I kept refrigerated vans working. These vans would take fresh food to the soldiers all over Korea. This was from August 1950 to April 1952. When we first got to Korea, we only had 12 miles of the country in our hands.

Later the generals thought it would be good if the troops could have ice cream once in a while, so we took a metric ice cream machine from Nagoya, Japan and fixed it so we could make ice cream. One of the problems we ran into was what we would put the ice cream into (containers), so we finally put them in halves of beer cans, covered them with wet gunny sacks and took them to troops in our refridgerated vans.

On one of our trips north, we stayed in a little Korean village at and took off in the dark of the next morning. We later found out the village had been almost completely surrounded by Chinese (the enemy).

One thing I did in Korea was send away to Sears-Roebuck for a J.C.Higgins shotgun and plenty of shells. With this I was able to go into the hills and go pheasant hunting, which I did quite a bit. One time, by keeping the pheasants cold in our refridgerated van, I fed a whole company of men 108 pheasants.

I am sorry to say I can't tell you about my second trip to Korea. I was in the intelligence service and it was classified as a secret.

When I returned in March of 1957, we were again assigned to Ft. Ord, where I taught Army Administration until 1959 when I was assigned to Ft. Bragg, NC. Just before we were reassigned, our son, Rod, was born. At Ft. Bragg I worked for the Inspector General and stayed there until 1962, when I was appointed Warrant Officer and was sent to Germany. Three months prior to being reassigned to Germany, our daughter Heather was born (aside from Holly, Mom brought the 4 kids over on Lufthansa and the stewardess spilled hot coffee on Heather). We were stationed in Germany for 3 years and while there we visited France, Belgium, Ireland (w/out kids), Holland, Switzerland, Austria, Spain & Luxembourg. Then we were sent back to Fort Bragg in March of 1965. (aside from Holly: when we got our things out of storage, it looked like someone had been using it). After staying at Fort Bragg until December of 1966 I retired on the 1st day of 1967, whereupon we moved back to Reno and I worked at Harold's Club and attended the University of Nevada.

I graduated from the University of Nevada in January of 1970 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in education, with a major in English.From there we moved to Winnemucca, NV where I taught at Albert Lowery High school. Holly moved out on her own to Corona Del Mar, CA. In 1971 we moved back to California, me in Glendale teaching at Hoover High School and the rest of the family in San Clemente. After about four months I moved back to San Clemente and soon after we moved to Pensacola, FL. Right after this Scot moved out on his own.

I taught six years in Pensacola at Pensacola High School and then we moved back to CA in 1978.

Military honors:
Good conduct medal with two bronze loops
Army Commendation Medal
Asiatic-Pacific campaign medal (being in the South Pacific during the end of WWII)
World War II Victory Medal (mop up of Marianas)
Army Occupation Medal (Japan)
Korean Service Medal (with 5 bronze campaign stars)
United Nations Service Medal (for being in Korea)
Armed Forces Expeditionary Medal (Domincan Republic)