Early and Family Life
Earnest Calkins was born to Mary Manville and William Clinton Calkins in Geneseo, Illinois. They moved soon after a few miles south to Galesburg, where his father became the city attorney for a short while. At age 6, a bout of measles left him “almost completely deaf”, although it was not recognized until he was 10. His teachers told him he could hear if he paid more attention. By age 14 he was fully deaf. His mother was a Baptist who forbade him to read fiction, even Arabian Nights and Jules Verne, but he read widely on a variety of subjects, devouring books with enthusiasm. He was exposed to printing at an early age, and was determined to become a printer himself.
After high school, his father secured him a position in a local printshop as a Printer's devil, and he worked 12 hours day for six months for no pay. When he finished his chores, he was allowed to set type for the patent medicine readers.
He attended Knox College and established a mediocre academic record, unable to hear almost anything in his classes. He did well at writing however, and in his senior year was elected editor-in-chief of the college newspaper, Coup d'État. He was then made editor of the college news published in the local paper every Thursday. He learned to master lip reading, although he said he got more from reading than from the classes. He barely graduated in 1891, after the faculty failed him in Geology, but the Trustees overruled them and allowed him to graduate.
Calkins married Angie C. Higgins (1863–1950) in 1904. They had no children.
Read more about this topic: Earnest Elmo Calkins
Famous quotes containing the words family life, early, family and/or life:
“Blackmail is one of the great pastimes of family life.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“A two-year-old can be taught to curb his aggressions completely if the parents employ strong enough methods, but the achievement of such control at an early age may be bought at a price which few parents today would be willing to pay. The slow education for control demands much more parental time and patience at the beginning, but the child who learns control in this way will be the child who acquires healthy self-discipline later.”
—Selma H. Fraiberg (20th century)
“Nor does the family even move about together,
But every son would have his motor cycle,
And daughters ride away on casual pillions.”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)
“The life of our city is rich in poetic and marvelous subjects. We are enveloped and steeped as though in an atmosphere of the marvelous; but we do not notice it.”
—Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867)