Early Life
Sirhan is a Palestinian Christian with Jordanian citizenship born in Jerusalem, Mandatory Palestine. When he was 12 years old, his family emigrated, moving briefly to New York and then to California. He attended Eliot Junior High School (now known as Charles W. Eliot Middle School) in Altadena, California, John Muir High School and Pasadena City College. Sirhan's father, Bishara, was characterized as a stern man who often beat his sons harshly. Shortly after the family's move to California, Bishara returned alone to the Middle East. Sirhan has retained his Jordanian citizenship and has not become a U.S. citizen.
As an adult, Sirhan changed church denominations several times, joining Baptist and Seventh-day Adventist churches, and also allegedly dabbled in the occult. He was employed as a stable boy in 1965 at the Santa Anita race track in Arcadia, California.
Read more about this topic: Sirhan Sirhan
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:
“I looked at my daughters, and my boyhood picture, and appreciated the gift of parenthood, at that moment, more than any other gift I have ever been given. For what person, except ones own children, would want so deeply and sincerely to have shared your childhood? Who else would think your insignificant and petty life so precious in the living, so rich in its expressiveness, that it would be worth partaking of what you were, to understand what you are?”
—Gerald Early (20th century)
“After all, it is hard to master both life and work equally well. So if you are bound to fake one of them, it had better be life.”
—Joseph Brodsky (b. 1940)