Early Life
Coleman was born in New York, the son of Beverly (née Behrman) and Norman Bertram Coleman, Sr. His family was Jewish (his paternal grandfather had changed his surname from Goldman to Coleman). He was a graduate of James Madison High School in Brooklyn and Hofstra University on Long Island. New York Senator Chuck Schumer, a Democrat, attended high school with Coleman; Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders and Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg are both graduates of the same high school.
During his time at college, Coleman was an active member of the 1960s counterculture and a liberal Democrat. "Carting a bullhorn around campus, he'd regularly lecture students about the immorality of the Nixon administration and the Vietnam War." He successfully ran for president of the student senate during his junior year. Under Coleman, the senate refused to ratify the newspaper's editor and her co-editor and cut some funding to the newspaper. But after refusing to swear in the editor on four different occasions, the senate finally backed down. He allegedly smoked marijuana, and he celebrated his 20th birthday at the Woodstock Festival. He worked as a roadie for Jethro Tull and Ten Years After, amongst others.
Read more about this topic: Norm Coleman
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:
“The secret of heaven is kept from age to age. No imprudent, no sociable angel ever dropt an early syllable to answer the longings of saints, the fears of mortals. We should have listened on our knees to any favorite, who, by stricter obedience, had brought his thoughts into parallelism with the celestial currents, and could hint to human ears the scenery and circumstance of the newly parted soul.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“We all come from our own little planets. That’s why we’re all different. That’s what makes life interesting.”
—Robert E. Sherwood (1896–1955)