Early Years
Steen was born in Caddo, Texas, and attended high school in Houston. He went on to study at John Tarleton Agricultural College in Stepenville and in 1940 transferred to the Texas College of Mines and Metallurgy (now named the University of Texas at El Paso), receiving a B.A. degree in geology in 1943.
Ineligible for the draft because of his poor eyesight, Steen spent World War II working as a geologist in Bolivia and Peru. Returning to Texas in 1945, he married Minnie Lee ("M.L.") Holland. He started graduate school at the University of Chicago but after a year returned to Houston to take a job doing field work for the Standard Oil Company of Indiana. However, within two years he had been fired for insubordination and had trouble getting any job as a geologist anywhere in the oil industry.
Read more about this topic: Charles Steen
Famous quotes related to early years:
“I believe that if we are to survive as a planet, we must teach this next generation to handle their own conflicts assertively and nonviolently. If in their early years our children learn to listen to all sides of the story, use their heads and then their mouths, and come up with a plan and share, then, when they become our leaders, and some of them will, they will have the tools to handle global problems and conflict.”
—Barbara Coloroso (20th century)