Early Life
Couch was born in tiny Calhoun in Columbia County in southern Arkansas. During his youth, he assisted his parents and younger siblings with the endless work associated with a small cotton farm. As his father's health deteriorated, the family moved to nearby Magnolia, the seat of Columbia County. During this time, he was taught by future Governor of Texas Pat Neff at Southwestern Academy in Magnolia. In 1898, Couch successfully passed a correspondence course test, qualifying him to enter the Railway Mail Service, sorting mail in one of the many railway post office cars which criss-crossed the nation. Couch initially worked on a railway post office route on the St. Louis, Iron Mountain & Southern Railroad between St. Louis and Texarkana, then a Memphis and Texarkana run over the St. Louis Southwestern Railway, before getting an assignment south into Louisiana out of his home town of Magnolia.
Read more about this topic: Harvey C. Couch
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:
“Perhaps the most valuable result of all education is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do, when it ought to be done, whether you like it or not; it is the first lesson that ought to be learned; and however early a man’s training begins, its probably the last lesson that he learns thoroughly.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)
“A life spent in making mistakes is not only more honorable but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)