something I’ll never forget,” he says. ' 'n one

something I’ll never forget,” he says.

' 'n one of his first nights on the job, Gaines was told to operate a machine he had never before manned. "Boy, I tore up some wood that night,” he recalls.

When the war broke out, Gaines, overage during peacetime, became eligible.

Savs Gaines, “I enlisted in the Seabees with the stipulation that when the war was over, I was over."

The Navy, which possesses a less subtle sense of humor, believed otherwise. After serving on a mine sweeper, and participating in the first wave in the invasion of Japan, Gaines was reassigned when the lighting ceased. "I could have killed the guy" who told him his Navy hitch was not yet complete.

His three half-brothers, on the other hand, thrived in the services One. Thurston, retired an Admiral, one a Navy captain, a third an Army Lt. Colonel.

"You know, one of the most impressive things that I’ve seen — and 1 think about it from time to time — was Thurston’s (full military') funeral" at Annapolis.

But w hile the other family members remained in the service, John chose to return to his family’s Warrenton farm.

"I couldn't get help on the farm,” Gaines recalls. “I told my wife, we gotta do something.”

He worked in Culpeper, then in Texas, then returned to the area to open a shop in McLean. He was also making a living buying houses to remodel them, selling them at a profit.

He also founded a branch of the Boys’ Club in McLean, an extension becoming necessary when, he said, enrollment grew to where “we had too many to haul” to play ball in Washington, I). C. He expected about a dozen or so boys to sign up at the McLean club. “We got 500 that first year," he says. Demand outgrew supply. “We were playing in cow pastures — anywhere we could play.” Still, the country in the boy beckoned. "Ten or 12 years” later, he decided "it was time to get out of the city."