John Larkin Wright, born in Des Moines, Iowa, received his formal education at Milliken University in Decatur, Illinois, and the Drake Conservatory of Music in Des Moines, Iowa. After enlisting in the United States Army Air Corps, he served as a flight instructor at Spence Field in Moultrie, Georgia, where he met his future wife, Kathryn Claudia “Kitty” Webb of Tifton. In 1944 he volunteered for overseas duty as a P-47 fighter pilot with the 36th Fighter Group of the 9th Air Force, flew eighty-four combat missions, and led his squadron’s attack on the Remagen Bridgehead in Germany. He received the Distinguished Flying Cross with Oak Leaf Clusters, the Air Medal with 11 Oak Leaf Clusters, the European-African-Midwestern Theatre Service Medal, and the WWII Victory Medal. After a seventeen-year military career, he retired as deputy base commander at Turner Air Force Base in Albany, Georgia, and he later died in Tifton, Georgia, at the age of ninety.