Pete Conrad - Early Life and Schooling

Early Life and Schooling

Pete Conrad was born on June 2, 1930, in Philadelphia, the third child and the first son of Charles Conrad, Sr., and Frances De Rappelage Vinson Conrad, a well-to-do real estate and banking family. His mother wanted very much to name her newborn son "Peter", but Charles insisted that his first son bear his name. In a compromise between two strong-willed people, the name on his birth certificate read "Charles Conrad, Jr.", but to his mother and virtually all who knew him, he was "Peter". When he was 21, his fiancee's father called him "Pete" and thereafter, Conrad adopted it. For the rest of his life, to virtually everyone, he was "Pete".

The Great Depression wiped out the Conrad family's fortune, just as it had those of so many others. In 1942, it lost its manor home in Philadelphia, and then it moved into a small carriage house, paid for by Frances's brother, Egerton Vinson. Eventually, Charles, Sr., broken down by financial failures, left his family.

From the beginning, Pete Conrad was clearly a bright, intelligent boy, but he continually struggled with his schoolwork. He suffered from dyslexia, a condition which was little understood at the time. Conrad attended The Haverford School, a private academy in Haverford, Pennsylvania, that previous generations of Conrads had attended. Even after his family's financial downturn, his uncle Egerton supported his continued schoooling at Haverford. However, Pete's dyslexia continued to frustrate his academic efforts. After he failed most of his 11th grade exams, Haverford expelled him from school.

Conrad's mother refused to believe that her son was unintelligent, and she set about finding him a suitable school. She found the Darrow School in New Lebanon, New York. There, Conrad learned how to apply a systems approach to learning, and thus found a way to work around his dyslexia. Despite having to repeat the 11th grade, Conrad so excelled at Darrow that after his graduation in 1949, he not only was admitted to Princeton University, but he was also awarded a full Navy ROTC scholarship.

Starting when he was 15 years old, Conrad worked during the summertime at the Paoli Airfield near Paoli, Pennsylvania, bartering lawn mowing, sweeping, and other odd jobs for airplane flights and occasional instructional time. He learned more about the mechanics and workings of aircraft and aircraft engines, and then he graduated to minor maintenance work.

When he was 16, he drove almost 100 miles (160 km) to help a flight instructor whose airplane had been forced to make an emergency landing. Conrad repaired the plane single-handedly. Thereafter, the instructor gave Conrad the flight lessons that he needed to earn his pilot's license even before he graduated from high school.

Conrad continued flying while he was in college, not only keeping his pilot's license, but also earning an instrument flight rating. He earned his B.S. in aeronautical engineering from Princeton in 1953, and his automatic commission as an ensign in the Navy as a Naval ROTC graduate.