He was decorated for bravery and was disabled in the fighting during World War II.

He served thirty-nine months in the United States Army Air Corps in the South Seas. As a musicologist specializing in medieval music, especially Gregorian chant, Griffin received certificates of study from the Benedictines at the Abbey of Solemnes in France.īeginning at age nineteen, he worked as a medic in the French Resistance army, evacuating Austrian Jews to the port of St. He received certificates of musical study from the Conservatoire de Fontainebleau, under the tutelage of such renowned teachers as Nadia Boulanger, Robert Casadesus, and Jean Batalla. Pierre Fromenty at the Asylum of Tours, conducting experiments in the use of music in therapy for the criminally insane. He entered the Lycée Descartes in Tours, France, completed studies in French and literature at the University of Poitiers, and studied medicine at the École de Médecine.

Paschal High School in Fort Worth until he left the United States at fifteen in search of a classical education. His family influenced Griffin's lifelong love for both music and literature. His mother was a classically trained pianist who taught for thirty years in the Fort Worth area, and his father was a fine Irish tenor and a radio personality as a younger man. John Howard Griffin, writer, the second son of four children of John Walter and Lena May (Young) Griffin, was born in Dallas, Texas, on June 16, 1920.

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