Early Years
Kennard was born in the city of Bandung in the Indonesian province of West Java. Both of her parents were of mixed Eurasian ancestry. Her father, Johan, was of Dutch, Indonesian and German ancestry, while her mother, Wilhemine, was mostly of Chinese Indonesian ancestry as well as Dutch and Belgian ancestry. English is not her native language; she speaks it with a distinct Dutch accent. Her father died in a Japanese concentration camp when she was one year old.
Kennard and her mother moved to the Netherlands in 1955. The rigidity of the Dutch educational system meant that Kennard's hopes of attending university were derailed when she contracted a tumor on her right leg, which resulted in the amputation of part of that limb at age 16. In 1961, she was able to immigrate to the United States as a result of a special law that authorized 15,000 additional visas for Dutch Indonesian refugees; she settled in Los Angeles and found her first U.S. job as a secretary for Occidental Life Insurance. Wilhemine (who was stuck in a menial restaurant job) stayed behind so that her daughter would always have a place to come home to, but died of lung cancer in 1968.
Wilhemine's last gift to her daughter was a bequest of $5,000 she had carefully saved up over the years. This money, on top of Kennard's own savings (and additional income from continuing to work part-time while in school), enabled Kennard to finally pursue her long-deferred dream of going to college. In 1970, she graduated with a Bachelor of Arts magna cum laude in German from the University of Southern California, where she would go on to graduate in 1974 with a Master of Public Administration and a Juris Doctor from the USC Gould School of Law.
Read more about this topic: Joyce L. Kennard
Famous quotes related to early years:
“I believe that if we are to survive as a planet, we must teach this next generation to handle their own conflicts assertively and nonviolently. If in their early years our children learn to listen to all sides of the story, use their heads and then their mouths, and come up with a plan and share, then, when they become our leaders, and some of them will, they will have the tools to handle global problems and conflict.”
—Barbara Coloroso (20th century)