Orphaned at 10. Jack chose to leave his home in Porthmadog. Wales. as a teenager. to emigrate to Canada as a farmhand. and entered the United States in the mid1920s by simply walking over the border. He then spent the next 10 years at a variety of jobsconstruction worker. porter. busboy. and even a summer stock actor with Bette Davis. according to one biographer. who also recounts that Jacks career in oil began when he was a waiter in a New York City speakeasy. There he met a vice president of Shell Oil Co.. who offered him a job as a trainee. He rose to the position of marketing manager in the New England area until World War II. when he enlisted as a private in the U.S. Army. and was sent to Africa. Jacks knowledge of the oil business came to the attention of his superior officers who arranged for his naturalization as a U.S. citizen so he could attend Officers Training School. He spent the remainder of the war as an adviser to the ArmyNavy Petroleum Board of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. and retired as a full colonel in 1972. After the war.
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naturalization emigrate