“My dad was in the Army, in the 11th Airborne Division. They rotated from Fort Campbell, Kentucky over to Augsburg, Germany in 1956, and then back again in ’57. The SS United States transported those soldiers and families back home. That’s how we ended up on the ship. We went first-class. I was eight years old and remember swimming in the indoor pool as it rocked with the waves. I have vague memories of the stateroom, but it felt grand. That ship was something else.

Dad was a paratrooper, and I followed in his footsteps. I started doing commemorative jumps again last year, after 33 years off. We wear the old uniforms and jump out of C-47s, the same planes that flew into Normandy on D-Day. Seven of the cast members from the Band of Brothers TV series trained with us. They got certified and jumped with us into Normandy. It’s all about honoring our Greatest Generation. 

I’m retired now and live in Niceville, Florida. A few years ago I started a small publishing company called Bohannon Hall Press. My motto is “At Bohannon Hall Press, there is no stress.”

My wife, Sandy, is a mathematician and a poet. She was inspired by Sofia Kovalevskaya—the first woman to earn a PhD in mathematics and the first woman to get a professorship in Europe. Sofia also wrote plays that were never translated into English. My wife was inspired. She taught herself Russian and spent 20 years working on a book about Sofia. Finding a publisher was difficult so Bohannon Hall Press was born and Mathematician with the Soul of a Poet: Poems and Plays of Sofia Kovalevskaya was published.

I love taking a raw manuscript and turning it into a beautiful book. It satisfies that creative urge. Our first book was about women’s education, so it felt right to name the press after Sandy’s great-grandmother, Alice Louise Bohannon Hall.

Grandma Hall was widowed young with ten children still at home. She tightened her belt, went back to school, got certified in agriculture, and became a successful farmer in north Mississippi. She raised all ten kids on her own. That legacy of strength and education runs through everything we do.”

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