John McKay is very nearly a native of Atlanta, born in a small town near the Alabama border, but moving into the city before he was four. He entered the Army shortly after graduation from Cross Keys High School in DeKalb County, served as a Combat Medic, and was initially assigned to the 506th Infantry “Currahees,” 101st Airborne Division at Fort Campbell, Kentucky. He later transferred to a helicopter battalion in West Germany, and ended his military career in a Georgia Army National Guard unit.

After leaving the Army, John spent over 15 years as a firefighter and paramedic in and around Atlanta, including a stint at Grady Memorial Hospital’s Emergency Medical Service, sometimes called “Atlanta’s Knife & Gun Club.” He ended his career as a Lieutenant, the Training Officer for the Dahlonega-Lumpkin County Fire Department, and a firefighting and hazardous-materials incident instructor at the Georgia Fire Academy.

In 1990 he finally had the chance to attend college, and chose North Georgia College in Dahlonega, GA, a campus he had admired since he was a teenager. John was also attracted by NGC’s well know reputation for academic rigor and excellence, and the quality of its History and Education Departments. While at NGC, John worked as a freelance writer and photographer for commercial magazines, newspapers, academic and literary publications. After graduation with a BS in Social Sciences Secondary Education, majoring in US History, John taught American history, government and military history at the high school level for several years.

In 2001 John was selected to be the originating Lead Teacher for the Georgia National Guard's Peach State STARBASE Program at the Clay National Guard Center near Marietta, GA. STARBASE is a federal Dept. of Defense premier youth program, currently boasting 84 locations in 39 states and territories, from Guam to Puerto Rico, that provides a no-cost, week-long STEM academy program, oriented around engineering principles, primarily to at-risk 5th Grade students on public Title I schools. John’s location also operates 13 middle school programs, all centered on building, flying, and coding aerial robots, and serves about 2,200 students per year. During his teaching career, John developed a special interest in researching the largely unwritten history of irregular and guerrilla operations in Georgia during both the Revolutionary War and the "Late Unpleasantness." Most of his published historical work has been centered on Civil War tactical studies, including the "Atlanta Campaign" section of the Encyclopedia of the American Civil War, the Insiders’ Guide to Civil War Sites in the Southern States, and Brave Men in Desperate Times: The Lives of Civil War Soldiers. Other published work has been on one of his favorite subjects, a little heralded Civil War regiment known as the Georgia State Line.

Other published local history works were It Happened In Atlanta, a light, popular history of the Gate City of the South, and Speaking Ill of the Dead: Jerks in Georgia History, a look at the bad guys, desperados, cutthroats, murderers, and Methodists that have added color and crime to the states history. John was appointed Director of the Georgia National Guard’s STARBASE Program in 2013, and that same year was formally ordained into the pastoral ministry, as a chaplain with the ministry he had founded, the Emergency Medical Services Chaplains of Georgia, which serves EMTs, Paramedics, and First Responders throughout the state. He remains today at the helm of both organizations. John resides in the northwest Georgia foothills, with Bonnie, a recovering debutante and retired nurse who is a long-suffering "Civil War widow," as well as an invaluable source of information on the social mores of the "Old South." The "Orphan Brigade" does picket and skirmisher duty around their property; a constantly changing assortment of critters who appear seemingly out of nowhere at regular intervals.