Early Years
Born in Kansas City, Missouri, the son of Latvian immigrants, Goodman Ace (he inverted his first non de plume, Asa Goodman) grew up wanting to write, proving it as the editor of his high school newspaper. Ace was also a roller skating messenger for Montgomery Ward while he studied journalism at Kansas City Polytechnic Institute. He also wrote a weekly column called "The Dyspeptic" for the school newspaper. In due course, after also working at the post office and a local haberdashery to support his mother and sisters after his father's early death, he became a reporter and columnist for the Kansas City Journal-Post.
Jane Epstein was his high school sweetheart; the problem for Ace was that the romance was one-sided until he became a local newspaper reporter. Jane wanted to attend the sold-out performance of Al Jolson in Kansas City; her boyfriends were unable to get tickets, but Ace had access to the concert via his press pass. The Jolson concert was the couple's first date; they married six months later, in 1922.
Read more about this topic: Goodman Ace
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or years:
“The shift from the perception of the child as innocent to the perception of the child as competent has greatly increased the demands on contemporary children for maturity, for participating in competitive sports, for early academic achievement, and for protecting themselves against adults who might do them harm. While children might be able to cope with any one of those demands taken singly, taken together they often exceed children’s adaptive capacity.”
—David Elkind (20th century)
“With care, and skill, and cunning art,
She parried Time’s malicious dart,
And kept the years at bay,
Till passion entered in her heart
And aged her in a day!”
—Ella Wheeler Wilcox (1850–1919)