John L. Cowan's ancestors came from the western part of Scotland. He was born December 1927 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He lived there his first 12 years. He finished high school in Philadelphia [Annotator's Note: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania] then went to college. [Annotator's Note: There is a background conversation going on during the interview.] His sister was older than the three boys and was the pride of the family. The boys were close to each other. His father was a technical expert in manufacturing in metallurgical composites. For a period, he taught at Carnegie Tech [Annotator's Note: Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania]. He went into business selling steel. He was not really a salesman type. The three boys kind of formed their own family and did things that were not really respectable. Cowan's mother was interested in Christian Science [Annotator's Note: a set of beliefs and practices developed in 19th century New England by Mary Baker Eddy] and not much else. Her father was one of the three founders of Gulf Oil Corporation. He knew how to make money. The wealth did not last. This thing in 1929 was called the Depression [Annotator's Note: The Great Depression, a global economic depression that lasted from 1929 through 1945] and all of the money disappeared. His father was somewhat blamed for it. He was a Harvard [Annotator's Note: Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts] graduate and had been in class with his friend Franklin Delano Roosevelt [Annotator's Note: Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 32nd President of the United States]. By the time his father told the boys they were going to watch him [Annotator's Note: Roosevelt] drive by, he did not agree with the things Roosevelt wanted to do. Roosevelt was strongly disliked by his father, so he and his brothers took rotten fruit to throw at the President. His father noticed and asked what they were up to. He made them throw the stuff away. They turned on the television at home and Roosevelt was on it. They took heavy sticks and beat the television to pieces.

John L. Cowan did not know or care what a Depression [Annotator's Note: The Great Depression, a global economic depression that lasted from 1929 through 1945] was. They [Annotator's Note: Cowan and his two brothers] had each other and to hell with the rest of the people. They only paid attention to themselves. They treated their neighbors badly. One called the police on them. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer asks if he recalls where he was when he learned of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941.] It was a long way off and it did not bother them much. He was in high school and on the wrestling team. He was chairman of the student faculty committee and a straight A student. He was an Eagle Scout [Annotator's Note: highest achievement in the Boy Scouts of America]. People taught him that he was better off not spending his life aggravating other people, especially those in greater authority. His brothers grew up to be very worthwhile citizens. Cowan became a financial manager for four of the United States' biggest financial companies. Cowan paid attention to the war every day in every way. He was the neighborhood director for how to ward off the Russians and Nazis. They had constant blackouts and meetings. Nobody doubted that we [Annotator's Note: the United States] would be in the war or which side we would be on. Nobody liked the Nazis. He studied the German language in high school. The teacher was a displaced German who did not want them to use English in her class. They were convinced she was sending money to the German side. Three of them went to the principal of the high school. She said she would not send any more money back to Germany. Cowan had a Victory garden [Annotator's Note: also called war gardens, or food gardens for defense; encouraged to reduce pressure on the public food supply]. That all led to his interest in the Reserve Officers Training Corps [Annotator's Note: ROTC]. He went in a very strong ROTC program at MIT [Annotator's Note: Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts]. He was student commander and reported to a Colonel.

John L. Cowan became quite a marksman [Annotator's Note: in the Reserve Officers Training Corps or ROTC]. After he went through boot camp, he was told he was not going to be sent to Germany. He wanted to do that. They said he was going to stay and train new recruits. He screamed and hollered until he was sent. Everybody wanted to go. That was the patriotic thing to do. Cowan went to Belvoir [Annotator's Note: Fort Belvoir, Virginia], outside of Washington, D.C. for Officer Candidate School [Annotator's Note: OCS] and received his commission as a Second Lieutenant. He received engineer training at MIT [Annotator's Note: Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts]. The other guys were chasing girls and he was chasing "A"s [Annotator's Note: the letter grade "A"]. He later decided to get a Master of Business degree before he went into the commercial world. He applied at Harvard [Annotator's Note: Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts] and Wharton [Annotator's Note: Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, also called Wharton Business School, and Wharton School in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania] and was accepted at both, but he chose Wharton. One afternoon was a bad afternoon. He got two different letters from the school and was confused. He went to the University of Pennsylvania and said what he wanted them to do. They agreed and let him in the school.

John L. Cowan went on active duty in February or March 1945. He was at MIT [Annotator's Note: Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts] and was struggling. He decided that his best route was to go into the Navy's V-12 Program [Annotator's Note: V-12 US Navy College Training Program, 1943 to 1946]. They would pay the room and board as well as tuition. The V-12 guys he knew were well taken care of. He enlisted and sworn into the Navy. The Navy found out one of his legs was longer than the other. Hiroshima got bombed [Annotator's Note: nuclear weapon dropped on Hiroshima, Japan on 6 August 1945] and it was clear that the war was going to be over shortly. He went to the recruiting office and asked to get out of the commitment because it was a different ballgame now. They told him the whole world had changed and let him go. He was deferred from the military. He had been in the war for two weeks and was now out of the war. He was no longer a commissioned officer in the Navy. He was later drafted into the war and was sent to Fort Belvoir [Annotator's Note: Fort Belvoir, Virginia] with other students from MIT. He became a commissioned officer again after the war had ended.

John L. Cowan was asked to teach incoming recruits how to handle a Garand rifle [Annotator's Note: .30 caliber M1 semi-automatic rifle, also known as the M1 Garand]. He was sent to Germany as a Second Lieutenant at the end of 1945. He kept his head down and enjoyed life. The war was now about cleaning up a big mess. Everything was so poorly run and awful that it was hard to get the manpower and materials needed to build the bridges and roads. As the Germans retreated, they were destroying whatever they could. They thought they would fight up to Berlin. The Germans were retreating towards the central part of Germany as slowly as they could. They played football against them once. The Germans were paid to drag their feet and stall as much as they could. He wound up at Tempelhof [Annotator's Note: Berlin Tempelhof Airport in Berlin, Germany] outside Berlin. He lived on the base. The people were mostly widows of German soldiers. Berlin was a mess and was basically destroyed. People lived in what was left of their basements. They were freezing and a shortage of food. He spoke German well and was told to report to the air base every day. He was useful to the base due to his speaking German. The same people that he had been hating and trying to kill off, he now felt so sorry for. Eventually Tempelhof became the eastern end of the Airlift [Annotator's Note: The Berlin Airlift; Western Allies' operation to supply the blockaded city of West Berlin, 26 June 1948 to 30 September 1949]. The Russians made it so there was no way to get things into Berlin [Annotator's Note: Berlin Blockade, Soviet Union blocked Western Allies access to Western control sectors, 24 June 1948 to 12 May 1949]. The Berlin Wall [Annotator's Note: a guarded concrete barrier that physically divided Berlin, Germany from 1961 to 1989] went up and Cowan was in charge of requisitioning for the American part of the base. The airplanes were flying morning, noon, and night out of Frankfurt [Annotator's Note: Frankfurt, Germany]. They were B-37s that did not hold much. Instead of hating the Germans, he began to feel very sorry for them. Starving and freezing are lousy ways to die.

The Germans were very proud people. They always managed to put on hats and some kind of gloves. Somehow or other, John L. Cowan's paycheck went up and he discovered he was a First Lieutenant. Cowan thought Eisenhower [Annotator's Note: General of the Army Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower, Supreme Commander, Allied Expeditionary Force; 34th President of the United States] was a wonderful General. He went to see him when he came to take his victory laps in the United States. Cowan saluted him and he saluted back, but he never met him or talked to him. They were both busy. The eastern part of Berlin [Annotator's Note: Berlin, Germany] would not have survived without the Airlift [Annotator's Note: The Berlin Airlift; Western Allies' operation to supply the blockaded city of West Berlin, 26 June 1948 to 30 September 1949]. When Cowan first went there, the planes were flying low all day and night and he could not sleep. When he left Germany and went back to France where there was no noise, he could not sleep. The planes were coming in one per minute. He was living fine and going to the officers' club and meeting German ladies. There was not much standing. The city had been taken right down to the ground. Cowan returned to the United States in 1948 or 1949. He applied for a transfer to the Air Force. At Belvoir [Annotator's Note: Fort Belvoir, Virginia], he was taking flying lessons in his spare time. Cowan became a member of the Air Force Reserve. He went to meetings almost every week for years. He had no concerns about the Cold War [Annotator’s Note: a period of geopolitical tension between the Soviet Union and the United States and their respective allies from 1945 to 1991] heating up. He left the military in September 1956. He had served his commitments. For some reason, he was told to go to the Pentagon [Annotator's Note: headquarters building of the United States Department of Defense in Arlington County, Virginia] and fill out some papers. The man was mad because Cowan had been approved for transfer to the Air Force. Cowan said something obscene to him. [Annotator's Note: Cowan laughs.] He signed his papers and was a weekend warrior in the Air Force. He gave a speech about Stalin [Annotator's Note: Joseph Stalin; General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union]. He took it very seriously. He got his discharge and that was the end of his service. He was a Second Lieutenant.

John L. Cowan's civilian career started out with way too much education. He got the right bosses and became known as an outstanding financial manager for corporations. He became Treasurer of Continental Oil [Annotator's Note: Shelly Dean Oil Company, Continental Oil Center, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma]. Then he was hired by Norfolk and Western Railway Systems in Roanoke, Virginia. He met the Chairman of United Airlines who hired him. United Airlines became four independent companies and Cowan's job disappeared. He became a financial consultant. He then went to Middle South Utilities in New Orleans [Annotator's Note: New Orleans, Louisiana]. He worked for five years supplying utilities. He was the number two man there. His military service did not have much influence on his career. He did not have any trouble getting jobs. He turned 65 and went to Naples [Annotator's Note: Naples, Florida]. He went to work in real estate. The military was always screwed up. In the corporate life, if you did not make wise decisions, you did not last long. They were different as day and night. He respects the military but does not admire the way they do their business. One situation after another was laughable in the military. Cowan studied hard at eight different universities and colleges around the world. He went to MIT [Annotator's Note: Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts]. He went to the Wharton School of Business [Annotator's Note: Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, also called Wharton Business School, and Wharton School in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania]. He went to the University of Oslo [Annotator's Note: in Oslo, Norway] for music. He studied at LSU [Annotator's Note: Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana] and New York University School of Law [Annotator's Note: in New York, New York]. He did not use the G.I. Bill for any of his education. The only time he was helped was his three weeks in the Navy. Then the Hiroshima bomb [Annotator's Note: nuclear weapon dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, 6 August 1945] dropped, and he did not want any part of it.

John L. Cowan does not remember much about his time in the military. It was not very exciting. Cowan decided to serve in World War 2 because he ran out of money. He does not think it changed his life. He was trying hard to be a good soldier but people around him were very incompetent. They were doing the best they could, and their aims and ambitions were perfect, but they messed everything up. Maybe now the Army and the Navy and Air Force are much better fed with high class people. He hopes and thinks so. In World War 2, everybody wanted to serve and help get rid of those Nazis. They did not know which end of the gun the bullet came out of. The military did not affect his corporate life. As a Second Lieutenant he could not do much good. Mistakes were made and materials were lost. People were killed unnecessarily. [Annotator's Note: People can be heard talking in the background.] Things are probably better now. He is glad he went and fulfilled his requirements. Cowan does not think World War 2 is very relevant today. It was a very sad period for people. In the end, it did not do anybody any good. [Annotator's Note: Cowan tells the interviewer that he himself has probably spent more time thinking about the relevance than Cowan has.] He got in, he did his job, and he got promoted somehow.

A lot of people learned a lot of important lessons from World War 2. If we did not think about it, analyze it, and benefit from it, we would still be doing a lot of the same things. John L. Cowan feels there is a lot the Germans, the Europeans, and the United States learned from that. We learned how to build a nuclear device that came in handy. It was not all bad. It was helpful, training-wise, for the United States. It was sad for the losing people in Germany. [Annotator's Note: Cowan thinks that the interviewer is engaged in a very worthwhile thing to occupy his time. They discuss this.] Cowan's brother Paul had an interesting military life. He enlisted in the Air Force and was sent to repair jet aircraft. [Annotator's Note: People are talking in the background.] He became an expert and a Colonel. His whole life was fixing aircraft engines. He went to a big aircraft company in Hartford that made the engines [Annotator's Note: Pratt & Whitney; American aerospace manufacturer in East Hartford, Connecticut]. He wanted to talk to them about what could be improved. He told them he had gone all over the world fixing their engines. They hired him. He traveled all over the world for them and enjoyed helping them build better engines. He was head of the wind tunnel technical work. He was Cowan's friend and confidant for 70 plus years. He and his siblings were very close. That is rare. His sister was Queen of the May [Annotator's Note: a personification of the May Day holiday who wears a white gown to symbolize purity] in his family. His parents took good care of her. She was almost jealous of her brothers and moved close to one of them. It was a messy situation that turned into a happy one.