Early Life and Career
Weitzel was born in Winzeln, near Pirmasens in the Palatinate, then part of the Kingdom of Bavaria within Germany. His parents, Ludwig and Susanna (Krummel) Weitzel, immigrated to the United States and settled in Cincinnati, Ohio, where he was educated in the city schools. He was appointed to the United States Military Academy (then under the superintendency of Robert E. Lee). Weitzel demonstrated a strong proficiency for mathematics and engineering, and graduated 2nd out of 34 cadets in the Class of 1855. He was initially assigned to help improve the defenses of New Orleans. In 1859, he returned to West Point as Assistant Professor of Civil and Military Engineering. Weitzel married Louisa C. Moor of Cincinnati on November 3, 1859, but she was tragically burned to death only three weeks later. He was promoted to first lieutenant of engineers in 1860. In 1861, he was reassigned to Washington, D.C. in the Corps of Engineers. His company served as the bodyguard during the inauguration of President Abraham Lincoln.
Read more about this topic: Godfrey Weitzel
Famous quotes containing the words early, life and/or career:
“When lilacs last in the dooryard bloomed
And the great star early drooped in the western sky in the night,
I mourned, and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring.
Ever-returning spring, trinity sure to me you bring,
Lilac blooming perennial and drooping star in the west,
And thought of him I love.”
—Walt Whitman (1819–1892)
“The feeling of being hurried is not usually the result of living a full life and having no time. It is on the contrary born of a vague fear that we are wasting our life. When we do not do the one thing we ought to do, we have no time for anything else—we are the busiest people in the world.”
—Eric Hoffer (1902–1983)
“The problem, thus, is not whether or not women are to combine marriage and motherhood with work or career but how they are to do so—concomitantly in a two-role continuous pattern or sequentially in a pattern involving job or career discontinuities.”
—Jessie Bernard (20th century)