Angel on My Shoulder: I’ve Joined the Lucky Bastard Club

Harley Hamilton Tuck decided when he was a teenager he wanted to leave the world a better place than it was when he got here. He flew combat during World War II as a radio operator aboard a B-17 bomber, completing twenty-seven missions before bailing out of a flaming ship over France to spend a year in Austria's infamous Stalag 17B as a Prisoner of War. Tuck took the opportunity to begin educating himself in the field of agriculture, attended college when he returned to the States, and started teaching a few years later. Tuck took his skills around the world over the course of his career, training outreach workers among the remote Hill Tribes near the Laotian border for a decade, joining the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization and relocating to Afghanistan in 1972, where he supervised a fleet of United Nations vehicles and farm equipment, working with Afghan mechanics who taught him as much as he taught them. When he accepted a UN position in Indonesia, Tuck continued training teachers, working through various programs in rural areas to improve and modernize agricultural practices. He eventually created his own Indonesian corporation to provide consulting services in his field, learning, growing, and teaching until his retirement in the late 1990s. Tuck credits the "Angel" on his shoulder for escorting him through the harrowing collection of hazards and close calls he encountered in his extensive travels. Hitch a ride from a fruit ranch in central Washington state through the fiery skies of the European War Theater, tour the back-country of Thailand, the noisy streets of Kabul and Java's steamy jungles with Tuck for a first-class adventure with a generous-hearted and unusual man whose desire was to leave a positive mark on this world.