Carly Joseph Ally was born to Carl and Mary Ally in Detroit, Michigan on March 31, 1924.  His mother was an Italian-American and his father was a Turkish immigrant, who worked on the Great Lakes ore ships and was later a tool and die maker.  Ally joined the Army Air Corps during World War II and served from 1942-1945. [20]  He went back to the Air Force as a fighter pilot in 1951 during the Korean War.  During his fighter pilot reign he won both the Distinguished Flying Cross and a Presidential Citation.  He earned a BA from the University of Michigan in 1949, and after the Korean War, he received his Masters degree 1953.  In 1952 he married his first wife, Patricia Nusco and later had two children. [6]

Before heading off to the Korean war, he spent two and a half years in Schenectady, New York, working at General Electric.  Before becoming a copywriter for the company, he attended an intense training course, which he compared to Harvard MBA school. [6]