ALTAMONT, Tenn. – Despite his 91 years, Grundy County, Tenn., World War II veteran Thomas Rollins sees himself as a youngster compared with the men he served with in Germany.
Rollins was an 18-year-old in the tiny town of Altamont who was taking any work he could get – mostly at the local saw mill or nearby farms – when he was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1944.
The draft letter was no surprise when he picked it up from the town’s post office. Many of his friends had already been called to duty and some had returned. Others had not.
“It said, ‘Greetings from the President of the United States. You have been selected,'” Rollins recalled with a smile. The veteran U.S. Army corporal described himself as a “bashful” teen.
“That’s the only letter I ever got from the president,” he laughed, sitting in the living room of his cozy mountaintop home less than a mile from the county courthouse.