Phil Bredesen - Background

Background

Bredesen was born in Oceanport, New Jersey. His parents were Norma Lucille (née Walborn) and Philip Norman Bredesen. His father, a captain in the U.S. Army Signal Corps, was stationed at Fort Monmouth in New Jersey at the time of Bredesen's birth. The family lived in various locations during Bredesen's early childhood, including Canandaigua, New York and Arlington, Massachusetts. The Bredesen name is of Norwegian origin.

When his parents separated in 1951, Norma moved with her two sons, Phil and his younger brother Dean (1947–2006), to her family home in Shortsville, New York, where they lived with Bredesen's maternal grandmother, a widow. Shortsville is the community Bredesen considers to be his hometown, and he lived there until he left for college. He attended the Red Jacket Central Elementary and Secondary School, located in the adjoining village of Manchester.

In 1961, Bredesen entered Harvard College, where he concentrated in physics and lived in Quincy House. He received his A.B. in 1967.

Bredesen married Susan Cleaves in 1968, but they divorced in 1974 and had no children. In 1974, Bredesen married Andrea Conte in Wheatley, Oxfordshire, England, and the two have one son, Ben. In 1975, the family moved to Nashville, Tennessee. There Bredesen founded HealthAmerica Corp., an insurance company that eventually grew to more than 6,000 employees and was publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange. He sold his controlling interest in HealthAmerica in 1986, and because of the wealth he earned from his work with the company, he did not accept his gubernatorial salary.