Born in 1918, Guy Gunter grew up the son of a policeman in the East Lake community of Atlanta. He graduated from Tech High School and studied electrical engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He never graduated because he had already found success working as a salesman for General Electric. He and his friends were at a drive-in movie when news of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor aired on the radio.

Gunter entered the Army Air Corps and trained at Sheppard Field in Texas, where he was a member of the first graduating class of glider pilots in 1942. Gunter was first posted in North Africa, where he piloted high-ranking officers across the continent. During the Allied invasion of Sicily in 1943, Gunter had to land his glider in the Mediterranean because of anti-aircraft fire. He was injured and spent the night in the water before a Greek destroyer picked him up the following day. On Gunter’s twenty-sixth birthday, June 6, 1944, he landed a glider carrying a “Pathfinder Group” of thirteen soldiers behind enemy lines during the invasion of Normandy. In September of that year, Gunter participated in the Allied invasion of the Netherlands as part of the largest force of gliders – over 1,800 – ever launched.

On VE or Victory in Europe Day, Gunter celebrated with thousands of others on the streets of Paris. He returned home and married his junior high sweet heart, Evelyn Davis, and had three children. Gunter started a high-end appliance company, Guy T. Gunter & Associates, in Atlanta, Georgia.