John Martin Meek

John Martin Meek thinks the best way to describe his life growing up in the Dust Bowl of Western Oklahoma, starting life in the Great Depression, going through the Korean War with the Marines, getting degrees at the U. of Oklahoma and Syracuse U., having a career as a journalist, spending near 40 years in Washington, DC in political and private sector public affairs, writing speeches for two presidents, teaching or lecturing at two major universities and a community college, would be to put these words on his tombstone: "He worked without a net."

Writing books has come late but wonderfully in his life. The idea for "The Christmas Hour," written under the pen name of John Martin Hill, germinated 13 years until he typed the first words on his computer in December, 1997 and finished in late spring, 1999. Every minute of writing this love story between a young teacher and a student at two elite prep schoos was joyful with no idea what words or characters might next appear on the page.

"I Might Just Be Right," the second book, was easier just assembling a collection of newspaper columns and features with a short annotion before or after each piece.

The next project, "The Other Pearl Harbor, "The Army Air Corps and Its Heroes on Dec. 7, 1941," is a sort of niche-niche book reflecting some ten years of research from the National Archives in Washington, DC to the shores of Hawaii.

This book is the little known story of the destruction of the Army Air Corps bases during the Pearl Harbor attack and the first two designated and decorated heroes of World War II.

The two young heroes were 2nd. Lts. Kenneth Taylor and George Welch, who fearlessly took to the air in their P-40s when 350 Japanese planes attacked mostly Hawaii's military bases and shot down the first enemy aircraft of World War II.

This earned Taylor and Welch the Distinguished Service Cross, the Army's highest award strictly for heroism in combat. But their heroism also was somewhat used by the top Army commander to divert attention from the military forces in Hawaii not being prepared when a war was on our dootstep.

(This same technique was used some sixty years later with the faux Iraq and Afghanistan war heroes, Pvt. Jessica Lynch and Cpl. Pat Tillman, as tools for the Pentagon PR machine to divert attention from the Abu Gharib Prison scandal.)

On Dec. 7, 1941 Taylor and Welch faced possible courts martial for taking off without orders on their first flight and against orders the second time they went up.

Taylor was a card shark and Welch a jokester, both making life uncomfortable for the West Pointers under whom they served.

In the Foreword by Donald M. Goldstein P.hD, the preeminent author/historian on Pearl Harbor, he writes,

"This is an entertaining read that I believe is an important work because it adds to the Pearl Harbor literature a missing dimension -- the story of two men who usually are given one or two lines in most books but were truly American heroes who, unlike many on that fateful morning, were not asleep."