Early Life
Fisher was born Lizabeth Davis Frehling on April 6, 1948, in Louisville, Kentucky, the daughter of Marjorie Faith (née Switow) and George Allen Frehling. Her parents were of Russian Jewish descent. Her parents divorced when Fisher was four, and the following year her mother married multimillionaire Max Fisher, who adopted Fisher.
Raised in Michigan, Fisher attended Kingswood School (today's Cranbrook Kingswood School) in Bloomfield Hills (where she had briefly dated politician Mitt Romney), and attended college at the University of Michigan for a year before taking a volunteer position at ABC television in Detroit, Michigan, which she left when afforded an opportunity to join the staff of Gerald R. Ford, then President of the United States, as the first female "advance man".
In 1977, Fisher entered her first marriage, which soon dissolved. In 1984, she sought treatment at the Betty Ford Center for alcoholism; while there, she realized she was artistically inclined. After rehabilitation, she resettled to New York City, New York, and in 1987 she married fellow artist Brian Campbell. The couple relocated to Boca Raton, Florida, and expanded their family. Fisher gave birth to son Max and after several miscarriages, adopted a second son, Zachary, with her husband. In 1990, Campbell requested a divorce and in 1991 informed Fisher that he was HIV positive. Fisher soon learned that she had contracted the disease from him, although their children tested negative.
Read more about this topic: Mary Fisher (activist)
Famous quotes related to early life:
“Many a woman shudders ... at the terrible eclipse of those intellectual powers which in early life seemed prophetic of usefulness and happiness, hence the army of martyrs among our married and unmarried women who, not having cultivated a taste for science, art or literature, form a corps of nervous patients who make fortunes for agreeable physicians ...”
—Sarah M. Grimke (1792–1873)