The Man Who Raised Me: The Boy Before the Father

By Cliff Potts
Bay Bay City, Leyte, Philippines — June 25, 2026

This is a serialized installment from the autobiography of Cliff Potts.

Eleven Years Old

My father lost his father at eleven.

That is where his story begins.

An eleven-year-old boy in the middle of the Great Depression watches his father die. His mother did not work outside the home. That was conviction, identity, and doctrine combined.

So he learned something early:

No one is coming.

He moved through Civilian Conservation Corps camps in Oklahoma. He picked up odd jobs. The men fed him and occasionally loaned him money. They kept him moving.

That is not the same thing as being raised.

It is being sustained.

Usefulness

He learned that value comes from usefulness.
He learned that emotion complicates survival.
He learned to stand upright and stay quiet.

Those lessons did not fade.

They became structure.

The Army as Structure

When Pearl Harbor was attacked, he entered the Army Air Corps. I do not believe he was drafted. Enlistment fits him better.

War offered clarity. Hierarchy. Purpose.

He served as a cook in the Pacific Theater and made sergeant. After the war, he left the service, struggled to find adequate civilian work, and re-enlisted around 1947.

But peacetime military was different. He later described it as “a bunch of Boy Scouts.”

He respected danger. He respected survival. He did not respect ceremony without risk.

The military did not soften him. It organized him.

Civilian Conservation Corps preparing beavers for transplant to a new area to stabilize the local ecosystem, USA, ~1938

https://piefed.social/c/historyphotos/p/2119674/civilian-conservation-corps-preparing-beavers-for-transplant-to-a-new-area-to-stabilize

I googled to try to figure out what all these #cccamp23 toots were about and this was the first hit.

https://www.lva.virginia.gov/exhibits/newdeal/ccc_camp.htm

#ccc #civilianconservationcorps #newdeal #swell