Early Life
Wilson was born on November 26, 1895, in East Dorset, Vermont, the son of Emily (née Griffith) and Gilman Barrows Wilson. He was born at his parents' home and business, the Mount Aeolus Inn and Tavern. His paternal grandfather, William C. Wilson, was an alcoholic who never drank after a conversion experience on Mount Aeolus. Both of Wilson's parents abandoned their child (his father never returned from a purported business trip, and his mother left to study osteopathic medicine). Bill and his sister were cared for by their maternal grandparents, Fayette Griffith and Ella Griffith, in their house. As a teen, Wilson showed determination, once spending months designing and carving a working boomerang. After initial difficulties, Wilson became the school's football team's captain and the principal violinist of its orchestra. Wilson also underwent a serious depression at the age of seventeen following the death of his first love, Bertha Bamford, from complications of surgery.
Read more about this topic: Bill W.
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:
“In early times every sort of advantage tends to become a military advantage; such is the best way, then, to keep it alive. But the Jewish advantage never did so; beginning in religion, contrary to a thousand analogies, it remained religious. For that we care for them; from that have issued endless consequences.”
—Walter Bagehot (1826–1877)
“The more highly public life is organized the lower does its morality sink.”
—E.M. (Edward Morgan)