He joined the U.S. Naval Reserve while still in high school, serving on a four pipe destroyer during the summers. His college plans at San Diego State College were interrupted when he was called to active duty in 1940 and served as an enlisted man on a minesweeper out of Point Loma, San Diego. In 1941 he took an exam to become an officer, ranking fifth out of over three thousand that were tested. He was attending the Naval Academy Preparatory School in Norfolk when Pearl Harbor was attacked. He graduated the United States Naval Academy in 1946 and would later be the second governor of Illinois to graduate from Annapolis. After that, he served as a naval officer near the end of World War II.