Early Life
He was born in Sharon, Pennsylvania, where his father worked for Savage Arms. The family moved to Utica, N.Y. in 1926 where his father was now Treasurer of the Utica branch of the Savage Arms Corporation. In 1934 young John was sent to Europe for several weeks and this whetted his appetite for travel, and for photography.
MacDonald enrolled at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania but dropped out during his sophomore year, where he was not doing well. He worked menial jobs in New York City for a short time, and then was accepted at Syracuse University. While there he met Dorothy Prentiss. They married in 1937.
He graduated from Syracuse the following year. In 1939, he received an MBA from Harvard University. MacDonald was later able to make good use of his education in business and economics by incorporating elaborate business swindles into the plots of a number of his novels.
In 1940 MacDonald accepted a direct commission as a First Lieutenant in the Army Ordnance Corps. He later served in the OSS in the China-Burma-India Theater of Operations during World War II. He was discharged in September 1945 as a Lieutenant Colonel.
Read more about this topic: John D. MacDonald
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:
“We are living now, not in the delicious intoxication induced by the early successes of science, but in a rather grisly morning-after, when it has become apparent that what triumphant science has done hitherto is to improve the means for achieving unimproved or actually deteriorated ends.”
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)
“My life is superficial, takes no root in the deep world; I ask, When shall I die, and be relieved of the responsibility of seeing a Universe which I do not use? I wish to exchange this flash-of-lightning faith for continuous daylight, this fever-glow for a benign climate.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)