Early Life and Career
Robert Frederick Hoke was born in Lincolnton, North Carolina, the son of Michael and Frances Burton Hoke. He had a younger sister Mary. Their father was a lawyer, orator, and unsuccessful Democratic nominee for Governor of North Carolina in 1844. Michael Hoke died shortly after losing that election. His death "had lasting effects" on Robert Hoke's political viewpoint.
The son disliked politics and avoided involvement, later rejecting the offer of the governor's position. Robert Hoke was educated at the Lincolnton Academy. He next studied at the Kentucky Military Institute, graduating in 1854. Hoke returned to Lincolnton, where he managed various family business interests for his widowed mother, including a cotton mill and iron works, .
Read more about this topic: Robert Hoke
Famous quotes containing the words early, life and/or career:
“The Americans never use the word peasant, because they have no idea of the class which that term denotes; the ignorance of more remote ages, the simplicity of rural life, and the rusticity of the villager have not been preserved among them; and they are alike unacquainted with the virtues, the vices, the coarse habits, and the simple graces of an early stage of civilization.”
—Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–1859)
“What is a novel? I say: an invented story. At the same time a story which, though invented has the power to ring true. True to what? True to life as the reader knows life to be or, it may be, feels life to be. And I mean the adult, the grown-up reader. Such a reader has outgrown fairy tales, and we do not want the fantastic and the impossible. So I say to you that a novel must stand up to the adult tests of reality.”
—Elizabeth Bowen (1899–1973)
“I doubt that I would have taken so many leaps in my own writing or been as clear about my feminist and political commitments if I had not been anointed as early as I was. Some major form of recognition seems to have to mark a woman’s career for her to be able to go out on a limb without having her credentials questioned.”
—Ruth Behar (b. 1956)