Early Years and Personal Life
Carper was born in Beckley, West Virginia, the son of Mary Jean (née Patton) and Wallace Richard Carper. He grew up in Danville, Virginia and graduated from Whetstone High School in Columbus, Ohio. He then graduated from the Ohio State University in 1968, where he was a midhsipman in the Naval ROTC and earned a degree in economics. Also while he was in college, Carper was a member of the Delta Tau Delta fraternity.
Serving as a Naval Flight Officer in the U.S. Navy from 1968 until 1973, he served three tours of duty in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War. He remained in the U.S. Naval Reserve as a P-3 aircraft mission commander for another 18 years and retired with the rank of Captain (O-6). Meanwhile, he moved to Delaware and earned a MBA from the University of Delaware in 1975. After which he went to work for the economic development office for the State of Delaware Carper has been married twice, first in 1978, to Diane Beverly Isaacs, a former Miss Delaware, who had two children by a previous marriage. Following a 1983 divorce, he married Martha Ann Stacy in 1985, and with her he has two children, Christopher and Benjamin. They are members of Westminster Presbyterian Church in Wilmington, Delaware.
Read more about this topic: Tom Carper
Famous quotes containing the words early, years, personal and/or life:
“Franklin said once in one of his inspired flights of malignity—
Early to bed and early to rise
Make a man healthy and wealth and wise.
As if it were any object to a boy to be healthy and wealthy and wise on such terms.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“Is it not strange that desire should so many years outlive
performance?”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“In the weakness of one kind of authority, and in the fluctuation of all, the officers of an army will remain for some time mutinous and full of faction, until some popular general, who understands the art of conciliating the soldiery, and who possesses the true spirit of command, shall draw the eyes of all men upon himself. Armies will obey him on his personal account. There is no other way of securing military obedience in this state of things.”
—Edmund Burke (1729–1797)
“When you realize how hard it is to know the truth about yourself, you understand that even the most exhaustive and well-meaning autobiography, determined to tell the truth, represents, at best, a guess. There have been times in my life when I felt incredibly happy. Life was full. I seemed productive. Then I thought,”Am I really happy or am I merely masking a deep depression with frantic activity?” If I don’t know such basic things about myself, who does?”
—Phyllis Rose (b. 1942)