Early Life
Frank Vincent Zappa was born in Baltimore, Maryland, on December 21, 1940. His mother, Rose Marie (née Colimore), was of Italian and French ancestry; his father, Francis Vincent Zappa, was an immigrant from Partinico, Sicily of Sicilian, Greek, and Arab ancestry. Zappa, the eldest of four children, was raised in an Italian-American household where Italian was spoken often by his grandparents. The family moved often because his father, a chemist and mathematician, worked in the defense industry. After a time in Florida in the 1940s, the family returned to Maryland, where Zappa's father worked at the Edgewood Arsenal chemical warfare facility of the Aberdeen Proving Ground. Due to their home's proximity to the arsenal, which stored mustard gas, gas masks were kept in the home. This had a profound effect on Zappa, and references to germs, germ warfare and the defense industry occur throughout his work.
Zappa was often sick as a child, suffering from asthma, earaches and sinus problems. A doctor treated his sinusitis by inserting a pellet of radium into each of Zappa's nostrils; little was known about the potential dangers of even small amounts of therapeutic radiation. Nasal imagery and references appear in his music and lyrics, as well as in the collage album covers created by his long-time collaborator Cal Schenkel.
Many of Zappa's childhood diseases may have been due to exposure to mustard gas. His health worsened when he lived in Baltimore. In 1952, his family relocated for reasons of health. They moved, next, to Monterey, California, where his father taught metallurgy at the Naval Postgraduate School. They soon moved to Claremont, then to El Cajon, before finally settling in San Diego.
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