Jim Gregory taught American literature, modern world literature, cultural anthropology, advanced placement U.S. history and AP European history for thirty years at Mission College Preparatory School in San Luis Obispo, California, and at Arroyo Grande High School. He, with his brother and two sisters, was raised in the Upper Arroyo Grande Valley and attended the two-room Branch Elementary School. He then studied journalism and history at Cuesta College; the University of Missouri-Columbia, where he received his bachelor's degree; and California Polytechnic State University-San Luis Obispo. He was an editor at ABC-Clio in Santa Barbara and a newspaper reporter in San Luis Obispo before becoming a teacher. He has also worked as a research historian for the San Luis Obispo County Historical Society. 

Jim was the Lucia Mar Unified School District's Teacher of the Year in 2010-11. In 2004, he received a Gilder-Lehrman Fellowship to study the Depression and New Deal with Pulitzer Prize-winning Stanford University professor David Kennedy, an experience that only deepened his fascination with the 1930s and 1940s. He has led several student trips to Europe, including visits to many of the villages and cities where young Americans fought in 1944-45. He recently taught a class on descriptive writing for young people as part of the Central Coast Writers Conference in San Luis Obispo. Jim is married to Elizabeth, a teacher and campus minister at St. Joseph High School in Santa Maria, and the father of two sons, John and Thomas. The Gregory family shares increasingly precious space in their Arroyo Grande home with one Basset hound, two Irish setters, one tortoise and a small army of cats.

Today Jim gave us a brief history of the military in Arroyo Grande, Santa Maria and surrounding areas during World War Two. The following are a few of the pictures Jim brought to show us.