Hyman G. Rickover - Early Life

Early Life

Chaim Rickover was born to Abraham Rickover and Rachel (née Unger) Rickover, a Jewish family in Maków Mazowiecki of Poland, at that time ruled by the last Russian tsar, Nicholas II. His parents later changed his name to "Hyman," also derived from the same Hebrew: חַיִּים (Chayyim), meaning "life." The family name "Rickover" is derived from the village and the estate of Ryki, located within an hour of Warsaw, as is Maków Mazowiecki.

Fleeing anti-Semitic Russian pogroms, Rickover, his mother and sister (Americanized: "Fannie") made passage to New York City in the United States in March 1906, joining Abraham who had made earlier, initial trips there beginning in 1897 to become established. Decades later, the entire remaining Jewish communities of Ryki and Maków Mazowiecki were killed or otherwise perished during the Holocaust, also known as the Shoah.

Rickover's immediate family lived initially on the East Side of Manhattan and moved two years later to Lawndale, a community of Chicago, where Rickover's father continued work as a tailor. Rickover took his first paid job at nine years of age, earning three cents an hour for holding a light as his neighbor operated a machine. Later, he delivered groceries. He graduated from grammar school at 14.

While attending John Marshall High School in Chicago, from where he graduated with honors in 1918, Rickover held a full-time job delivering Western Union telegrams, through which he became acquainted with U.S. Congressman Adolph J. Sabath. By way of the intervention of a family friend, Sabath, himself a Czech Jewish immigrant, nominated Rickover for appointment to the United States Naval Academy. Though only a third alternate for an appointment, through disciplined self-directed study and good fortune the future four-star admiral passed the entrance exam and was accepted.