Early Life and Education
John Pastore was born in the Federal Hill neighborhood of Providence, Rhode Island. The second of five children, he was the son of Michele and Erminia (née Asprinio) Pastore, who were Italian immigrants. His father, a tailor who had moved from Potenza to the United States in 1899, died when John was nine, and his mother went to work as a seamstress to support the family. She married her late husband's brother, Pasquale, who also ran a tailoring business. As a child, Pastore worked delivering coats and suits for his stepfather, as an errand boy in a law office, and as a foot-press operator in a jewelry factory.
Pastore graduated with honors from Classical High School in 1925, and spent a year working a $15-a-week job as a claims adjuster for the Narragansett Electric Company. In 1927, he enrolled in an evening law course given by Northeastern University at the Young Men's Christian Association in Providence. He received a Bachelor of Laws degree in 1931, and was admitted to the bar the following year. He then established a law office in the basement of his family's home, but attracted few clients due to the Great Depression.
Read more about this topic: John O. Pastore
Famous quotes containing the words early, life and/or education:
“In the early days of the world, the Almighty said to the first of our race “In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread”; and since then, if we except the light and the air of heaven, no good thing has been, or can be enjoyed by us, without having first cost labour.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)
“Shielded, what sorts of life are stirring yet:
Legs lagged like drains, slippers soft as fungus,
The gas and grate, the old cold sour grey bed.”
—Philip Larkin (1922–1986)
“I prefer to finish my education at a different school.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)