Early Life
Charles Phelps Taft was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, and was the son of President William Howard Taft and First Lady Helen Herron Taft, and the younger brother of U.S. Senator Robert Taft, and Bryn Mawr College professor Helen Taft Manning. He was named after his uncle, U.S. Congressman Charles Phelps Taft. He was only 11 years old when he moved to the White House, upon his father's election as President. During his father's tenure as Secretary of War, he was a frequent playmate of President Theodore Roosevelt's children. On the morning of May 17, 1909, the same day his mother suffered a severe stroke, he underwent a "bloody adenoid operation." He dropped out of Yale University in order to serve in the United States Army during World War I and later returned to graduate in 1918, and then earned his law degree from Yale Law School in 1921. He was a 1918 initiate into the Skull and Bones Society.
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