CHEROKEE, North Carolina — Playing in the woods came naturally to Reuben Taylor, who grew up in the mountains of the Cherokee Indian Reservation in western North Carolina in the 1930s.
“There was nothing to do back when I was growing up,” Taylor, 94, told the Washington Examiner in an interview at the American Legion Steve Young Deer Post 143, not far from his home in Bird Town, Cherokee.
“We used to climb the trees and swing over to another tree, back and forth," he said in a soft and measured tone.
Taylor’s lack of fear of heights would serve him well as an original member of the 82nd Airborne Division. The paratrooper infantry division was founded in 1942, shortly after he joined the U.S. Army at age 16 at the height of World War II.
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