Early Years and Education
Alford was born to Thomas H. Alford and the former Ida Womack in tiny New Hope near Murfreesboro in Pike County in southwestern Arkansas. He attended public schools at Rector in Clay County in far northeastern Arkansas. He graduated from high school in 1932, a year ahead of schedule.
Alford attended Arkansas State College in Jonesboro in eastern Arkansas, the Arkansas State Teachers College in Conway, and received his medical degree in 1939 from the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences at Little Rock. He served his internship at St. Anthony's Hospital in Oklahoma City and his residency in general surgery at Missouri Pacific Hospital in Little Rock. He received post-graduate training at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
While he was in college, Alford was a radio sportscaster who covered the American football games of the Southwest Conference. He turned down an opportunity to become a national broadcaster to concentrate on his medical career.
Read more about this topic: Dale Alford
Famous quotes containing the words early years, early, years and/or education:
“Even today . . . experts, usually male, tell women how to be mothers and warn them that they should not have children if they have any intention of leaving their side in their early years. . . . Children don’t need parents’ full-time attendance or attention at any stage of their development. Many people will help take care of their needs, depending on who their parents are and how they chose to fulfill their roles.”
—Stella Chess (20th century)
“I don’t believe one grows older. I think that what happens early on in life is that at a certain age one stands still and stagnates.”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)
“But to wish is first to think,
And to think is to be dumb,
And barren of a word to drop
That to a milder shore might come
And, years ahead, erect a crop.”
—Philip Larkin (1922–1986)
“Perhaps the most valuable result of all education is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do, when it ought to be done, whether you like it or not; it is the first lesson that ought to be learned; and however early a man’s training begins, its probably the last lesson that he learns thoroughly.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)