Youth
Robert David Muldoon was born to parents Jim and Amie Muldoon in Auckland in 1921.
At age five Muldoon slipped while playing on the front gate, damaging his cheek and resulting in a distinctive scar. At age eight, Muldoon's father was admitted to hospital, where he died nearly 20 years later. This left Muldoon's mother to raise him on her own. During this time Muldoon came under the strong formative influence of his fiercely intelligent, iron-willed maternal grandmother, Jerusha, a committed socialist. Though Muldoon never accepted her creed, he did develop under her influence a potent ambition, a consuming interest in politics, and an abiding respect for New Zealand's welfare state. A brilliant student at school, Muldoon won a scholarship to attend Mount Albert Grammar School from 1933 to 1936. He left school at age 15, finding work at Fletcher Construction as an arrears clerk.
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Famous quotes containing the word youth:
“When he became all eye when one was present, and all memory when one was gone; when the youth becomes the watcher of windows, and studious of a glove, a veil, a ribbon, or the wheels of a carriage, when no place is too solitary, and none too silent.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Remember thee?
Ay, thou poor ghost, whiles memory holds a seat
In this distracted globe. Remember thee?
Yea, from the table of my memory
I’ll wipe away all trivial fond records,
All saws of books, all forms, all pressures past
That youth and observation copied there,
And thy commandment all alone shall live
Within the book and volume of my brain,”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“Hardly ever can a youth transferred to the society of his betters unlearn the nasality and other vices of speech bred in him by the associations of his growing years. Hardly ever, indeed, no matter how much money there be in his pocket, can he ever learn to dress like a gentleman-born. The merchants offer their wares as eagerly to him as to the veriest “swell,” but he simply cannot buy the right things.”
—William James (1842–1910)