for lunch. He then went to Dixie High School. During summers, he worked as a bell hop at the North Rim Lodge along the Grand Canyon. In the evenings he would form a small band where he used his skills as a saxophonist to entertain guests. He delivered copies of the Deseret News around St. George on horseback. He graduated from Dixie Junior College (now Utah Tech University) and received a bachelor's degree in music education from Arizona State Teachers College (now Northern Arizona University) in 1933. He then received an LL.B. from the University of Arizona Law School in 1937. While studying at the University of Arizona he was the director of the university pep orchestra. Between the summer of his second and third year he directed this group at a hotel in Seattle, Washington. In the summer of 1936 after his graduation he directed an orchestra of four, performing on the SS Jefferson on a cruise from Seattle, Washington, to Yokohama, Japan. Also during his law school years Cannon competed in rodeos and learned to be an airplane pilot. Also in the summer of 1936, Cannon began dating Dorothy Pace of Alamo, Nevada. They married on December 21, 1945. After he finished law school he returned to St. George. Among his actions on his return was buying a house adjacent to Dixie College as an investment property. Early career Cannon became a lawyer after passing the bar exams in Arizona (1937), Utah (1938) and Nevada (1946). He served as a reference and research attorney for the Utah State Senate in 1939, and won election as county attorney of Washington County, Utah in 1940. Military service During World War II, Cannon served as a troop carrier pilot in the United States Army Air Corps and its subsequent incarnation as the United States Army Air Forces. Assigned to the European theater, he dropped paratroopers at Saint-Come-du-Mont, Normandy and during the following combat mission in September 1944 was shot down over the Netherlands. He spent 42 days trying to return to the Allied lines with the assistance of the Dutch underground. Released from active duty in 1946, he joined the Army Air Forces Reserve until 1947 when he transitioned to the Air Force Reserve concurrent with the establishment of the U.S. Air Force as a separate service. Continuing to fly in the Air Force Reserve, he achieved command pilot status and