Darrell Kovar was born in Dodge, Nebraska in 1936. He served in the Army in the Korean War. Before retiring after more than 40 years at Western Electric, where he was a mechanic, Darrell had a wide variety of other jobs. He worked at the stockyards in Omaha, sorting cattle. When he was a teenager he worked in a grain elevator, an experience that he described as extremely unpleasant. Safety was basically nonexistant and it would have been very easy to get stuck in the bottom of the elevator.