Youth
Donald Malarkey was born in Astoria, Oregon to Leo Malarkey, and Helen Trask. They were married in 1918. His father was Leo, who gained his nickname, "Tick", while attending the University of Oregon, where he played football, and had a job winding a huge campus clock. He was also a member of the Sigma Nu Fraternity. Two of Don's uncles, Gerald Malarkey and Robert Malarkey served in World War I. Gerald died in combat on August 11, 1918 in France by shrapnel from a German shell, and Robert died in 1926 due to complications of a mustard gas attack.
Don attended Star of the Sea, a Catholic school in Astoria, where he excelled as an athlete, most notably as point guard on the basketball team. He graduated from Astoria High School in 1939. As a youth, he worked on a purse seiner crew on the Columbia River. He also was a volunteer firefighter during the destructive Tillamook Burn forest fire, which destroyed thousands of acres of Oregon timber. He was in his first semester at the University of Oregon in the fall of 1941 when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor.
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Famous quotes containing the word youth:
“I loathe that I did love,
In youth that I thought sweet;”
—Thomas Vaux, 2d Baron Vaux Of Harrowden (1510–1566)
“Our Indian said that he was a doctor, and could tell me some medicinal use for every plant I could show him ... proving himself as good as his word. According to his account, he had acquired such knowledge in his youth from a wise old Indian with whom he associated, and he lamented that the present generation of Indians “had lost a great deal.””
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Time misspent in youth is sometimes all the freedom one ever has.”
—Anita Brookner (b. 1938)