Before John “Jack” Dunne gives an interview in his Whitefish home, he provides a disclaimer:

“Forgive me, but I’m a storyteller.”

As a storyteller, Dunne seems to enjoy sharing the more amusing moments of his boyhood and young adulthood — stories that reveal a prankish and clever nature.

The 90-year-old adds that he has had an interesting life and he’s not wrong. Dunne served as a tail gunner in the Pacific during World War II and worked as a logger, smokejumper and teacher.

Dunne was born on Christmas Day in 1925. When he was 3, his mother died. Dunne was raised by an aunt until his father remarried and they moved to Butte.

“It was rough old mining town,” he recalled. “I couldn’t wait to get out.”

At 17 a friend asked him to take the Army Air Force cadet test with him.

“He said he didn’t want to take it alone,” Dunne said.

Although his friend assured him that Dunne wouldn’t have to join, the military was something he wanted to be part of.

“My grandfather was an Indian war veteran. My dad was in World War I on the Mexican border and he was with a cavalry outfit. I just knew when I grew up I was going to go in the military and that was it. The quicker the better,” he said.

Ironically, it was Dunne who passed the test while his friend did not. Dunne said the friend ended up joining the Marines. But before his friend found out the test results, the pair had gone to Great Falls for physicals.

“He said, ‘You don’t have to worry; you don’t weigh enough; you can’t get in anyhow in the cadets.’ I weighed about 126 to 127; you had to weigh 132,” Dunne said. “I hated to have anyone tell me I couldn’t.”

Dunne got in line where he said hundreds of men waited to be measured. And then he went to the back of the line three more times.

“Until I was the last man in line,” he said. “This sergeant that was taking the weights and measurements didn’t even look up and said, ‘How much do you weigh?’ I said, ‘134,’ and he wrote it down.”

He turned 18 in 1944. On New Year’s Day he finally entered the Army.

“I was worried the war would be over when I went in,” Dunne said with a chuckle.

Yet he once again had to get a physical, and this time he had to stand on the scale. The physician asked if he had been sick.

“I said, ‘No sir, I’ve never been sick in all my life,’ and he said, ‘Well, you’ve lost a lot of weight. I told him what happened,” Dunne said.

Despite the weight issue he was sent to a base in Tennessee. His interest was piqued when he saw a notice that aerial gunners were needed.

“They were losing them like mad in Europe,” he said.

Once again a weighty issue stood between him and his plan.

“Went up to the doctor, he weighed me — ‘You don’t weigh enough,’ I said, ‘OK,’” Dunne said.

As much as he lacked in pounds, he made up for in persistence and returned to the doctor a second and third time.

“The third time the doctor said, ‘If you have to go that bad I’ll send you, but somebody along the line is going to catch up with you,” Dunne said. “I took the chance anyhow.”

Being a tail gunner was a dangerous post because whatever direction the enemy flew, “they always shoot the tail off.”

“Tail gunners I mean they didn’t last at all. But I didn’t know that,” Dunne said.

He was sent to gunnery school in Florida, which he referred to a “noisy Disneyland” of guns. Then he flew to Kansas and Puerto Rico for training on the B-29 Superfortress before shipping out to Guam in 1945.

“I never counted. They had me down for 30 [raids] on Japan,” Dunne said. “I think they missed a couple.”

Following his seventh raid, Dunne received the Distinguished Flying Cross.

“On the seventh raid we had a night fighter team that shot us all to hell and we made it to Iwo Jima and left our airplane there, got to the base on Guam and found out our sister crew had been shot down,” he said.

By the time he completed his service, Dunne had earned the rank of sergeant. Before returning, home a captain interviewed Dunne asking him if he was interested in joining the Strategic Air Command, which at the time was fairly new. Dunne said no and gave his reason.

“I haven’t been fishing in a long time and until I take care of that I’m not going to do another damn thing,” Dunne said, noting the captain’s unusual reaction: laughter. “He said, ‘I know exactly what you’re talking about.’”

When Dunne returned home, he was 19 and had been awarded three air medals and four other medals in addition to the Distinguished Flying Cross. He moved to Libby and got a job in logging. Eventually in 1946, he and a friend went to work for the U.S. Forest Service as smokejumpers.

“They really liked us because we knew how to saw, fell timber — we were woodsy. Most of the smokejumpers were military paratroopers — tougher then hell — but no ideas of using Pulaskis or cross-cut saws,” Dunne said.

While some years were busy parachuting to wildfires or other emergencies, there were calm years, too.

“1948 was a lousy year. It rained every day,” Dunne said with a laugh.

Dunne recounted one of the funny moments of life as a smokejumper when the crew was stationed in barracks not far from a circus carnival that was going on. One night, some of the men spotted a baby elephant tied to a stake.

“We led the elephant into barracks,” Dunne said as if it was the logical decision to make when one encounters a baby elephant.

The men scratched the little elephant, which wriggled with pleasure when someone got an idea.

“One guy said ‘Let’s turn off the lights and tie him to door,’” Dunne said.

The goal of the prank was to confuse men returning to the barracks who had a little too much to drink.

“Well, two drunks came in from town, opened the door. The elephant was trying to get out and they were trying to get in. They were feeling around trying to figure what it was. One guy said, ‘Oh hell, I’ll go back to town.’ It was funny. It was grand.”

They later returned the elephant to its owners none the wiser, according to Dunne.

After four years as a smokejumper he got married and had “to grow up,” as he put it. Dunne wanted to take up a meaningful career after his war experiences bombing cities in Japan.

“I saw myself as a teacher. I was looking for something decent to do,” he said. “You know we were burning big cities, and we were burning the houses, and we were burning the people — were burning the children and infants and the old folks. I mean it was necessary. It was a necessary evil. When I got back I said, ‘I have to do something decent now.’”

Teaching turned into a 33-year career — two years in Hot Springs and 31 years in Whitefish School District.

“I taught sixth grade. I enjoyed that age — it’s a beautiful age,” Dunne said.

His favorite days became Mondays and Fridays — “Mondays because the kids were waiting for me,” he said.

After retirement, Dunne picked up wood carving until it was too painful in one of his hands to continue. He then picked up a paintbrush using rocks as his canvas.

“I picked up a rock at Tally Lake, put in my pocket, took it home, thought I could do something with that,” Dunne said. “Eighty, 90 rocks later, here we are.”

Dunne paints a lot of things found in nature — butterflies, fish, birds, flowers. Most of them he gives away to friends, family and people he meets on the street. To Dunne no one is a stranger.

“I have friends from all over,” Dunne said.

Reporter Hilary Matheson can be reached at 758-4431 or hmatheson@dailyinterlake.com.