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Resident Spotlight: Jack MacNair

As we celebrate and honor all veterans and military families this month, we’re putting the spotlight on resident Jack MacNair for serving in the Philippines in the United States Air Corps.

Enlisting right after high school graduation, Jack traveled two weeks from Los Angeles to the Philippines in the first ship that wasn’t part of a convoy. “It was a pretty miserable experience,” said Jack.

While there, he acquired on-the-job training to serve as head of the motor pool. He was a private and a mechanic on weapons carriers.

Bobbie MacNair, Jack’s wife of 71 years, shared that “probably the one thing he brought home with him and used many times is from when he asked one of the Filipinos where a certain part was for a weapons carrier, and the response was ‘Improvise, Mac.’ Those have been some resounding words.”

And throughout their seven decades of life together, the MacNairs did improvise.

The two were married right after college – they met at Grinnell College in Grinnell, Iowa. Jack’s first job out of school was managing Warehouser Timber Company in Iowa before being transferred to Minnesota and then back to Iowa. The couple, who also had two sons, eventually moved to the MacNair family farm in Jetmore, Kansas where they lived for almost 40 years. “It was home for him, but a new experience for a girl from Philadelphia. But I liked it,” said Bobbie.

For the last two and a half years, Jack has called Manor of the Plain home, and Bobbie has been here just over a year.

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