Calvin Summers was born in February 1925 in Westminster, Maryland. When he was 11 months old he moved with his mother and older brother to live with his maternal grandparents in Reading, Pennsylvania. Summers had a good childhood. Reading was a quiet town then, and his neighborhood was mixed, white and black, but he knew discrimination was a fact of life. His mother and grandmother did housework, and his stepfather and grandfather worked for the WPA [Annotator's Note: the Works Progress Administration was a federally sponsored program that put unemployed Americans to work during the Great Depression]. When Summers was 14, he went to work to help support the family. He became a private chauffeur for the racketeer Tony Moran. Summers completed the tenth grade in high school, and at 18 he was drafted.

The attack on Pearl Harbor happened while Calvin Summers was at work, and when he came home, his family was discussing the raid. It didn't affect Summers at the time, but he did know that the killing of Americans would be a problem. He registered for the draft when he turned 18 in February [Annotator's Note: February 1943], and in July he was drafted. Right before he was inducted, he got married. Summers traveled with a busload of other young men to Allentown, Pennsylvania for his physical and he was sworn in as soon as he passed. He went to boot camp at Camp Ellis, outside of Peoria, Illinois, and was driving a truck in a quartermaster laundry outfit. He accepted his assignment cheerfully, because he thought that even if he was sent overseas, he would be comparatively safe working on the laundry. When he went home on furlough, he was introduced to his premature infant daughter in the hospital. He was then sent to Newport News, and attached to the 10th Cavalry [Annotator's Note: 10th Cavalry Regiment] who were horse soldiers at the time. In June 1943, Summers was shipped to Tunisia, then trucked to Algeria. At that point the 10th Calvary was broken up into different outfits, and Summers was assigned to a trucking outfit.

After a little more training in Africa, Calvin Summers crossed the Mediterranean and landed in Naples while the Allies were fighting on Anzio Beach. On the night he arrived, the Germans were bombing the docks very near where he was housed, and he watched the antiaircraft fire. He was attached to the 5th Army and became part of the push to relieve the soldiers who were having such a difficult time gaining ground. Summers commented on how difficult the German position at the mountaintop monastery at Monte Cassino was making the fighting until the ban on bombing religious sites was lifted. Summers' unit was bringing supplies up to the troops in the hills. There were times when Summers felt frustrated about not being able to engage in combat, but by then Summers had adjusted to Army life, and did what he was told. He was in an all black outfit that had white officers. His duties consisted of driving trucks to the depots and taking supplies, often without knowing what the cargo was, where they were needed. They sometimes went very near the action, and encountered small arms and mortar fire; occasionally the German and Italian soldiers would attack the trucks. Summers had a nasty experience with a mine in what was an obvious ambush. The Germans had set up a roadblock and the side road he had to take to avoid it was mined. His was one among a five truck convoy, and each truck was manned by a driver and a soldier with a .30 caliber carbine rifle [Annotator's Note: .30 caliber M1 semi-automatic carbine]. Summers' truck hit a land mine; he remembers an explosion and waking up the next day in a hospital, sore, bruised and scared. He was told that landing in a big mud puddle saved his life. Only two of the ten men from the convoy survived. Summers was sent back to active duty, and remembered seeing the Tuskegee airmen [Annotator's Note: members of the 332nd Fighter Group] flying their planes with the red tails over Italy. He met one of the pilots 60 years later.

Calvin Summers said he was proud to be part of the big machine that was fighting for his country. Summers had seen the poverty affecting the defeated Italians, who would go through Army garbage to take food home to their families, and he said no one among the ranks wanted that to happen to America. Summers was with the 5th Army as it fought its way through Italy, and was in Florence when the war ended. He hoped he would be able to go home, but he knew the war with Japan was still raging. He sailed from Marina de Pisa, Italy through the Mediterranean and across the Atlantic. When the transport was 200 miles off the coast of Virginia, it turned south, and went through the Panama Canal to the Philippine Islands. Summers was stationed in a little barrio below Manila when the atomic bombs were dropped and Japan surrendered. He remembers joining the friendly natives in celebration, which consisted of being treated to food and coconut "jungle juice" in every house up and down the barrio's one street. After VJ-Day, he was shipped across the China Sea, through a horrendous typhoon, to Japan. While on leave he visited Nagasaki, and remarked that there was not much left but a few walls and twisted metal. Summers said it was clear that a lot of people got killed at one time there, and he was glad that kind of thing didn't happen "at home." He also went into Tokyo, accompanied by another soldier's pet red dog, and said the Japanese gave the two of them a wide berth. Summers was finally sent home by way of San Francisco, Washington D.C., and Fort Meade, Maryland, where he was discharged.

Before Calvin Summers was discharged, he told his family he was on his way home. While he was still in Maryland, he decided to make a short trip to Baltimore to visit an aunt. As he was boarding the bus to travel there, someone called to him, and looked down the aisle to see his wife. They hugged and everyone on the bus applauded the tender scene. Summers said he was lucky to come home without injury, although he was disappointed, and at first a little angry, that the prejudice and segregation in our country had not changed. He eventually settled back into the reality of the way things were. He wanted to mention that while he was in Italy he encountered a great deal of curiosity among the civilians about his race, where rumors were rampant that black people had tails. But overall, Summers said he didn't run into prejudice anywhere he was stationed; the only place he ran into it was in America. He said most young people today have no idea how the returning black soldiers were treated, and are surprised when they learn about it. Nevertheless, Summers went on to have a good career and a happy life with a wonderful family.