Why Can't I

For almost 100 years photos, journals, newspaper clippings, Naval records and love letters waited quietly to tell the story of how a Depression-era Southern boy with nothing but talent and ambition rose to become a Navy fighter pilot and hero in WWII.

John Barry, Jr, born in poverty in coastal Carolina, lived with his siblings and parents in fish shacks and often had to scrounge through garbage to find food. He and his brothers and sisters were sent to an orphanage after his mother died and...