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In honor of Veteran's Day, we're re-printing this Memorial Day column. By the time a Reno television crew came to interview my father about D-Day, he was already well into his nineties. Age had slowed him physically, but not mentally. Some memories remained as
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By July 1943, Mark King had made up his mind. At 16, he had already traveled farther, worked harder, and survived more adventures than many men twice his age. He had ridden bucking horses, won rodeos, and learned that determination and ingenuity could overcome most obstacles. Now he wanted to
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On Aug. 22, 1939, the day after his 13th birthday, my father, Robert Mark King, sat in a movie theater in Fargo, North Dakota, watching something extraordinary. On the screen, a stagecoach raced across the desert, pursued by Apache warriors on horseback. One rider leaped from his horse onto the
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Hurry up and wait. Freight trains are rather good at that. And when you're 16 years old, hiding aboard one in late winter, the waiting can be considerably less enjoyable than the hurrying. In late February 1943, my father, Mark King, spent nearly a week traveling from Colorado
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By the winter of 1942–43, my father, Mark King, was a capable 16-year-old cowboy. He had traveled halfway around the world, worked cattle on two continents, wintered alone in a Wyoming line shack, and ridden rodeo alongside experienced cowboys. Looking back, Dad recognized how God had opened
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When Mark was a little boy, one of his favorite possessions was a record player. Some records told stories about cowboys, and somewhere in those stories a dream began. Mark wanted to go West. He wanted horses, open country and whatever mysterious quality made a cowboy a cowboy. By 13,
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All winter, Mark and Ken dreamed about spring. They had reason to. The previous summer had taken them farther into rodeo. Ken had started as Mark’s teacher, showing him how to haze while Ken wrestled steers. Before long they were traveling together, competing, pooling their winnings and entertaining crowds
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The crowd erupted. Mark liked that. I may have understated the matter. When Mark returned to Wapiti Valley, Wyoming, in the summer of 1940, Ken began teaching him rodeo. At first they stayed fairly close to home, practicing at the dude ranch and at nearby events. Ken knew rodeo. Mark
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Mark had gone West to become a cowboy. Then Ken told him he was going to teach him how to be a hazer. There was only one problem. Mark had no idea what a hazer was. He had met Ken the previous year on a combine crew in South Dakota.
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After fifth grade, Mark King’s education became a rather intermittent affair. On the farm in Wisconsin, he had faithfully walked five miles each way to school, even through snow. When he and his mother returned to New Jersey, where the schoolyard could become a battlefield, Mark chose work instead.
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Not often you get three summers in one year. Mark King managed it before he turned 14. His first was ending in New Jersey in August 1939. School was approaching, and doing nothing would make the decision for him. On his 13th birthday, Mark chose west. By autumn he had
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Mark King had crossed the Pacific once by ship. He was going home by air. At 13, Mark had never been in an airplane. Now he wore a borrowed shirt, carried a military bag and tried to behave as though being the seventh member of an American military flight crew