About the Author
John Raymond Takacs is an inventor, adventurer, and avid outdoor enthusiast. He currently resides on the west slope of the Sierra Nevada in California.
John was profiled in the Ledger Dispatch:
Takacs grew up the little Hoosier backwater of Mishawaka, Indiana. Within days of graduating high school he was on his way to Vietnam. Takacs became part of the U.S. Army’s highly elite paratrooper core, the 101st Airborne, better known as “The Screaming Eagles.”
For five months he put his life on the line in a series of jungle drops — until a helicopter he was riding in was shot down by mortar fire. As the chopper attempted to land it flipped completely into the earth, leaving Takacs’s body riddled with shrapnel and broken bones.