WWII vet leads an old-fashioned classroom

John Fraser Hart grinned as he examined a World War II model aircraft for the first time in 20, maybe 30 years.

“I loved to watch [the real ones],” he said.

The University of Minnesota geography professor and veteran swiped the collection of model airplanes from the aircraft carrier he served on, a commonality he called “midnight requisitioning.”

He said they were destined to be “deep-sixed” anyway — the U.S. Navy discarded things like model planes because it wasn’t worth the effort to bring them home.

“I thought they were more useful to me than they will be to Davy Jones’ Locker,” he said.

Hart, a University professor for more than 44 years, is possibly the only World War II veteran still teaching full time at the University, said his colleague John Adams.

Hart specialized in identifying aircraft and teaching the men on his ship how to tell the good guys from the bad guys.

Unlike the thousands of World War II veterans who poured into American colleges and universities after the war with their GI Bill benefits, Hart had already earned his undergraduate degree before he enlisted.

He entered the U.S. Navy in 1943 at 19 years old, already a graduate of Emory University.

“I didn’t want to be drafted,” he said.

Hart said he was one of the “90-day-wonders” — groups of men who undergo intense 120-day training to be commissioned as naval officers.

“The basic goal of midshipmen’s school was to break us,” he said. “We were going to be in intense situations under extreme pressure, and the idea was to subject us to the maximum amount of pressure before we joined the fleet.”

In each class, at least one person had a nervous breakdown, Hart said, but it was better to do it there than in the Pacific Ocean.

He said Columbia University, which hosted the midshipmen’s school, was one of many colleges that transformed into training schools for officers during the war.

“The facilities were there but there were not students,” he said. “The students were in the service.”

Hart said he spent about two years aboard a ship “wandering the Pacific Ocean.” He said his aircraft carrier, a type of warship that acts as a sea base for aircraft, went wherever the fighter and torpedo planes it carried were needed.

His job was to identify airplanes as either “good guys or bad guys.” Hart said he used the model airplanes to train sailors to recognize an aircraft.

“It’s pretty important to know which ones to shoot at and which ones not to shoot at,” he said.

He said most of the time, some of the men on board were “superfluous” — they were only needed when they were “shooting the guns.”

“The military is long periods of acute boredom punctuated by a few moments of sheer terror,” Hart said.

After World War II, Hart joined the occupations in Japan and China.

He said the U.S. Navy hated Gen. Douglas MacArthur because he refused to let the Navy go ashore.

“I looked at [Japan] for 30 days, but never set foot on the shore,” he said.

Part of that time was also spent bringing troops home, just a “part of the job.”

“At the end of the war everybody wanted to get out, everybody wanted to go home.”

Officers enlisted for the duration of the war, he said. No one was told of their return date.

“We were glad to see the end of each other; glad to get home and get back to what we wanted to be doing,” he said.

 Teacher by ‘default’

Unemployment was the biggest concern for returning vets after World War II ended, Hart said.

“My executive officer said, ‘In a year you’re going to be digging ditches because you won’t be able to get any other job,’" he recalled.

But he was one of the few who had already finished his undergraduate degree. After he was discharged in the summer of 1946, Hart went to graduate school at Northwestern University, where he met his wife.

After he received his doctorate in geography in 1950, he taught at the University of Georgia for six years, where he taught many student veterans.

He said he became a professor by default — he didn’t know what he wanted to be.

In 1967, after 12 years at Indiana University, he began teaching geography at the University of Minnesota.

In his lectures, Hart uses a projector and slides of photos he’s taken from the different parts of the U.S., said Professor Adams. It’s this that makes him an expert in portraying different parts of the country, he said,

“He’s old-fashioned in some ways, but the extent of his knowledge about what’s going on in this country is just encyclopedic,” said Adams, who has worked with Hart for more than 40 years.

Students in his Geography of U.S. and Canada class agree that Hart’s teaching method is unique.

“He’s definitely unlike any other teacher I’ve ever had,” said Stacy Luedtke, a communications junior.

She said Hart, who often sports a bow tie and suit, inspired her to explore and learn from experiences instead of just reading textbooks.

Hart’s teaching method, which doesn’t employ modern technology, is “the last of a dying breed,” said senior Robert Goswitz.

Hart can point to each of the 15 faces on the cover of his 2003 book “The Changing Scale of American Agriculture” and tell you a story:

“He has 1,200 dairy cows near Brookings, South Dakota.”

“He fattens 50,000 beef cattle a year.”

“He made possible the recovery of cotton in the South by eradicating the boll weevil.”

The professor said he most enjoys sharing what he’s learned from his travels around the country.

“Most of the fun I’ve had has been simply going around the country talking to people, looking at things and asking questions,” Hart said.

He lives in Edina, Minn., with his wife of more than 60 years.

As a Naval Reserve officer, Hart was required to attend two-week stints of duty each summer for the 20 years he was active to see “how the modern navy operates.”

Now a retired officer, he said he is still subject to military orders and disciplines.

He keeps memorabilia like his medals, or “travel stickers,” his collection of swiped model World War II aircraft and his uniform.

“It doesn’t fit anymore,” he said, laughing.