Tell us something about your family. |
I was the third of seven kids. My father could never hold a job for very long, and he was almost constantly in and out of institutions trying to get and stay sober. My mother, she was a rock and wouldn’t even think of leaving my dad. She used to tell us that we could get through whatever difficulty we faced if we worked hard, studied hard, and prayed hard. She would read to us at night, sitting around the kerosene lantern. Sometimes she read the Bible, and sometimes she read from periodicals that she had somehow acquired. Then she would quiz us and try to stimulate us to be curious, to remain involved and interested in a broader life — even though we were quite poor. We often didn’t have enough to eat, never had any money, and didn’t have much contact with the outside world. |
That poverty and isolation together must have had quite an effect. Would you say you were a close family? |
Oh, yes, we were indeed. My siblings and mother, and my father too — when he was sober. He was a very intelligent man, although he only completed the eighth grade and didn’t even start high school. But he was so deeply affected by alcoholism that it just paralyzed the whole family. We often went to bed hungry. I went to school in a one-room schoolhouse, and although all the grades were taught by one teacher, there was quite a bit of learning. |
Did you go to high school there as well? |
No, for high school, I went into Struble, IA, a little town eight miles away. That’s where I discovered that I could compete pretty well if I had a level playing field. I began to develop quite a bit of self-respect in spite of my homelife. |
Did you play any sports in high school? |
Yes, I played football and baseball. I was captain of the football team my senior year. My brother Jack, who was five years older, went to West Point, so I knew there was that possibility. To tell the truth, though, I didn’t think I could ever get into West Point. But I knew there was more to the world than tenant housing on an Iowa farm, and I intended to get out there and find it. |
It must have made your parents pretty happy that your brother got into West Point. |
I remember it like yesterday, the big debate between my mother and father when Jack was about to graduate from high school. My father said, “He’s going to work to help support this family,” something my father was not doing. And my mother said, “Over my dead body. He’s not going to work; he’s going to college!” She knew that the great equalizer in America is education, and that her kids, even though they were poor, were above average in intelligence and knew how to work hard to get ahead in school. She was going to see to it that we had the opportunity to get college educations. So my brother Jack went to Iowa State for a year on a scholarship and then won an appointment to West Point. That whole college prospect motivated me to do well in high school. |
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