Early Life
Hartmann was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan, the son of a staunch conservative Republican, atheist father and a Christian mother, and grew up in nearby Lansing, Michigan. His paternal grandparents were from Norway. Interested in politics from a young age, he campaigned for Barry Goldwater during the 1964 presidential election when he was 13. Although a gifted student, Hartmann was expelled from high school during tenth grade and later earned a GED.
Hartmann enrolled at Lansing Community College and transferred to Michigan State University, majoring in electrical engineering. In 1968, Hartmann opened his first business, a repair shop named The Electronics Joint located next to Michigan State University and became a part-time disc jockey at local country music station WITL. With Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), Hartmann protested against the Vietnam War .
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Famous quotes related to early life:
“... goodness is of a modest nature, easily discouraged, and when much elbowed in early life by unabashed vices, is apt to retire into extreme privacy, so that it is more easily believed in by those who construct a selfish old gentleman theoretically, than by those who form the narrower judgments based on his personal acquaintance.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)