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Mary Lawlor

Fighter Pilot's Daughter: Growing Up in the Sixties and the Cold War Hardcover – August 22, 2013

by Mary Lawlor (Author)

4.1 18 ratings

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Fighter Pilot's Daughter: Growing Up in the Sixties and the Cold War details author and Professor Mary Lawlor’s unconventional upbringing in Cold War America. Memories of her early life—as the daughter of a Marine Corps and then Army father—reveal the personal costs of tensions that once gripped the entire world, and illustrate the ways in which bold foreign policy decisions shaped an entire generation of Americans, defining not just the ways they were raised, but who they would ultimately become. As a kid on the move she was constantly in search of something to hold on to, a longing that led her toward rebellion, to college in Paris, and to the kind of self-discovery only possible in the late 1960s.

A personal narrative braided with scholarly, retrospective reflections as to what that narrative means, Fighter Pilot's Daughter zooms in on a little girl with a childhood full of instability, frustration and unanswered questions such that her struggles in growth, her struggles, her yearnings and eventual successes exemplify those of her entire generation.

From California to Georgia to Germany, Lawlor’s family was stationed in parts of the world that few are able to experience at so young an age, but being a child of military parents has never been easy. She neatly outlines the unique challenges an upbringing without roots presents someone struggling to come to terms with a world at war, and a home in constant turnover and turmoil. This book is for anyone seeking a finer awareness of the tolls that war takes not just on a nation, but on that nation’s sons and daughters, in whose hearts and minds deeper battles continue to rage long after the soldiers have come home.

Print length

336 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Publication date

August 22, 2013
Dimensions

6.32 x 1.15 x 9.28 inches
ISBN-10

144222200X
ISBN-13

978-1442222007
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Editorial Reviews

Review

Mary Lawlor's memoir, Fighter Pilot's Daughter: Growing Up in the Sixties and the Cold War, is terrifically written. The experience of living in a military family is beautifully brought to life. This memoir shows the pressures on families in the sixties, the fears of the Cold War, and also the love that families had that helped them get through those times, with many ups and downs. It's a story that all of us who are old enough can relate to, whether we were involved or not. The book is so well written. Mary Lawlor shares a story that needs to be written, and she tells it very well. ― The Jordan Rich Show

Mary Lawlor, in her brilliantly realized memoir, articulates what accountants would call a soft cost, the cost that dependents of career military personnel pay, which is the feeling of never belonging to the specific piece of real estate called home. . . . [T]he real story is Lawlor and her father, who is ensconced despite their ongoing conflict in Lawlor’s pantheon of Catholic saints and Irish presidents, a perfect metaphor for coming of age at a time when rebelling was all about rebelling against the paternalistic society of Cold War America. ― Stars and Stripes

Fighter Pilot’s Daughter. . . is a candid and splendidly-written account of a young woman caught in the political turmoil of the ’60s and the domestic turmoil that percolated around a John Wayne figure who won the Distinguished Flying Cross, eight Air Medals and the Cross of Gallantry across three generations of starspangled blood and guts. ... Among the triumphs of the book is Lawlor’s ability to transition from academic – she is the author of two scholarly books and numerous articles about American literature and culture – to popular writing. 'I tried very hard to keep my academic voice out of the book,' said Lawlor, who will be retiring as a professor and director of American Studies after the spring semester. 'In academic writing, you explain and explain and footnote and footnote, and some of the life inevitably comes out of it. I wanted this to have life.' In so many ways it does….[particularizing] her family, including her mother, Frannie, her older twin sisters (Nancy and Lizzie) and a younger sister (Sarah). . . . In many ways the Lawlor women drive her narrative. ... Her principal focus, inevitably, is her Fighter Pilot Father, who, in her words, 'seemed too large and wild for the house.' Jack Lawlor was so true to fighter-pilot form as to be an archetype, hard-drinking, hard-to-please, sometimes (though not always) hard-of-heart. Mary does not spare those details.' ― Muhlenberg: The Magazine

This engrossing memoir adeptly weaves the author's account of growing up in a military family in the United States and Europe with domestic American and international Cold War events. Mary Lawlor's descriptions of her parents' origins and aging, and her perceptive, honest reflections on childhood and young adulthood between the 1950s and 1970s, are illuminated by the knowledge and wisdom that develop over decades of adulthood. In re-visiting her earlier life, the author reveals a process of arriving at a compassionate understanding of the significant people in it—relatives, friends, nuns, boyfriends, and draft resisters, among others—and through this, a clearer understanding of one's self. She demonstrates that comprehension of the broad historical context in which one lives—in her case, the pervasive global rivalry between communism and anticommunism, and its influences on American ideals about family roles, political values, and aspirations, which she questioned and challenged as a young woman drawn into the counterculture—is crucial for attaining such self-knowledge.
-- Donna Alvah, Associate Professor and Margaret Vilas Chair of US History, St. Lawrence University

About the Author

Mary Lawlor is professor of English and the Director of American Studies at Muhlenberg College. She is the author of Recalling the Wild: Naturalism and the Closing of the American West, and Public Native America: Tribal Self Representation in Casinos, Museums and Powwows.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Rowman & Littlefield Publishers; Illustrated edition (August 22, 2013)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 336 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 144222200X
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1442222007
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.35 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.32 x 1.15 x 9.28 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #5,673,920 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #15,850 in Women in History
- #35,494 in Military Leader Biographies
- #36,085 in United States Biographies

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4.1 18 ratings

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Mary Lawlor

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Mary Lawlor grew up in a military family during the Cold War. Her father was a decorated fighter pilot who fought in the Pacific during World War II, flew missions in Korea, and did two combat tours in Vietnam. His family followed him from base to base and country to country during his years of service. Every two or three years, Mary, her three sisters, and her mother packed up their household and moved. By the time she graduated from high school, they had shifted homes fourteen times. These displacements, plus her father's frequent absences and brief, dramatic returns, were part of the fabric of her childhood, as were the rituals of base life and the adventures of life abroad.

As Mary came of age, tensions grew between the patriotic, Catholic culture of her upbringing and the values of the countercultural sixties. By the time she dropped out of the American College in Paris in 1968, she faced her father, then posted in Saigon, across a deep political divide. Inevitably, the war came home. The fighter pilot, without knowing it, had taught his daughter how to fight back.

Years of turbulence followed. Then, after working in Germany, Spain and Japan, Mary went on to graduate school at NYU, earned a Ph.D. and became a professor of literature and American Studies at Muhlenberg College.

She and her husband spend part of each year on a small farm in the mountains of southern Spain. More information is available at www.marylawlor.net.

Customer reviews

4.1 out of 5

18 global ratings

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Memoir at its finest

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on January 23, 2014

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I happen to be one of those people who love to read about others' lives. To me a well-written memoir reads like a good novel only better, because you know it's about a real person. Mary Lawlor's "Fighter Pilot's Daughter" captured me from the first sentence, which isn't always the case in books I've read. True, the "Fighter Pilot's Daughter" takes place in a time with which I'm familiar, having grown up in the same era. But my upbringing couldn't be more different than Lawlor's if we came from different planets. Her life is surrounded by the miliary and religion, two areas I have to admit were not at the top of my early references. Maybe that's one reason the book held such fascination for me. Same years covered but with remarkably different experiences. Lawlor is a smooth, elegant writer, expressing her thoughts and beliefs as part of the physical day to day story, making sense of her life and philosophizing about the world into which she was born. Slowly over the course of growing up we can see how her changing environments (moving every two years, for example) made her life expand whether she wanted it to or not. Eventually, her preconceived ideas about her family, religion and the military life are revealed to her as her eyes are opened to the realities of the times. She reflects on her changing sensibilities and you are eased into her awakening along with her -- her feelings about religion, about the war in Viet Nam and the struggles to reconcile those emerging feelings with a family mired in the cold war 50s and 60s. The book was a grabber and I couldn't put it down until it was done. Sadly, I might add, because I never want a good read to end. I look forward to more of Lawlor's writings and hope a new book will arrive in the near future.

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Ronald Bunch

Meaningful To All Cold War Families

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on October 30, 2013

Verified Purchase

I bought this book because I knew and flew with the fighter pilot: John L. Lawlor. He was a Marine Corps Aviator in WW2, but I flew with him in the Vietnam era when he was a US Army Aviator. I was the senior officer in our unit, and the commander, but Jack Lawlor, older than my mother, was a mentor to most of us. His tales of breaking formation as "Pappy" Boyington's wingman to "bounce a Betty (Japanese bomber)" always broke up US Air Force fighter pilot bar stories. The military families influenced by the Cold War are innumerable, but this book captures the most critical period, post WW2, Korea, Vietnam.
Jack Lawlor is a legendary WW2, Korea, and Vietnam aviator and Mary Lawlor's book connects Jack Lawlor's family with the experiences of all military "brats" and those parents who cared about them whilst we were "away".
It wasn't only the families who shared the disconnects, as we all ventured to and fro and tried to return to a culture wherein we felt we belonged. Our own culture(s) changed along the way.

3 people found this helpful

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Michael Lyons

Mary Lawlor's intro is an especially good recap of what growing up a military brat is ...

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on February 16, 2016

Verified Purchase

Mary Lawlor's intro is an especially good recap of what growing up a military brat is all about. Then in this great story you'll love her early, obedient, rules abiding childhood that evolves into the journey she takes to her own independence. At the same time Lawlor's story gives us an exceptional geo-political context of the Cold War. Definitely worth the read.

Helpful

WifeyK33

Looks like it will be a great ready, but it's way too expensive...

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on August 11, 2015

My husband is a fighter pilot, and we have a little girl. I'd really like to read this, but not for $26 (Kindle price)... If the price lowers, I'll definitely purchase it and recommend it for our monthly spouse book club.

One person found this helpful

Helpful

Paul D. Hurt

SERIOUSLY

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on May 29, 2014

Verified Purchase

A HIGH SCHOOL CLASSMATE WROTE THIS BOOK. THIS IS A GRAND TIME IN READING. SHE IS BRILLIANT AND HAS MORE GUTS THAN DICK TRACY. GREAT BOOK, GREAT WRITER

Helpful

gayle pace

YOU REALLY SHOULD READ THIS!

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on January 13, 2016

This is a memoir about the Lawlor family, Jack, Frannie and four daughters. The family with the good and bad results from the Catholic Church, the Cold War and the U.S. Army, was a typical Army family. Sometimes the parents were were a good influence and other times, not so good. Anyone who has been raised in a military family knows that you move a lot, friends are made and then left, you never stayed in one school very long and a life of strangers and strange places. One daughter, Mary has great insightfulness about her family and how each of them had their own way of fitting in to the many different places and people they met during the years. the father was absent a lot since he had a successful military career and two stints in Vietnam, and many temporary duty assignments that ended up extended instead of temporary. This left the family on its own. Ms. Lawlor tells the reader of the way their lives were changed by the Cold War and what little peace there was. The author tells of some of the stress that invaded her life. The many, some important, lessons that the family learned while under the strict and challenging situations they went through. Ms. Lawlor did a fabulous job of presenting the memoir of a daughter growing up in the U.S. Army in the sixties. She describes her Fighter pilot father, her mother, Frannie who held the family together when he was gone and kept the home fires burning. The author writes about the one evil thing, Communism. It was there, although you couldn't see or feel it but it was hiding around the corner to jump out at any minute. What will happen when it does? War is bound to happen. The book was very interesting. The reader could place himself with the family. The book didn't read like a memoir. It was more like a reality check. So many varied emotions that the whole family constantly was going through. Ms. Lawlor, the author, must have experienced a lot of pain and mixed emotions through the years which I'm sure were somewhat worse in reality than written. A wonderful insight into a young girl who grew up in a military family, the good and the bad, and how she dealt with it to become a talented author.

I received this book from the author, Mary Lawlor and Pump Up Your Book for my unbiased view of the book. No other compensation took place.

Helpful

Top reviews from other countries

Module

Interesting and enjoyable personal account of growing up in a military family in the 50's and 60's

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on January 3, 2016

Verified Purchase

Enjoyable, easy to read account of the author's life as a US military pilot's daughter. As a British cold war bomber pilot's daughter I can identify with her life within a military family in the same period. The additional information the author gives concerning the political climate at the time is interesting and not too detailed, but I did skip bits of her own life in Paris and Spain as I found it was the story of her parents and sisters she writes about best.

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