Early Life and Education
Judge Nickerson came from patrician Yankee stock, and was a descendant both of the Nickerson family of Cape Cod and of President John Quincy Adams. At St. Mark's School in Southborough, Massachusetts, he was quarterback of the football team and captain of the hockey team. But shortly before he entered Harvard College in 1937, Mr. Nickerson was stricken by polio, seemingly ending what had started out to be a promising athletic career. For two years, he was forced to wear his right arm in a brace held out from his body. While at Harvard, Mr. Nickerson showed unusual perseverance by teaching himself to play squash with his left hand. Ultimately he was named the squash team's captain and its ranking player. Harvard's athletic director, William Bingham, wrote to another Harvard graduate, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, about the courage of this young squash player. Soon Mr. Nickerson received a letter from the president in which Roosevelt discussed the disabilities they both shared. Mr. Nickerson kept that letter for the rest of his life. In 1943 he graduated from Columbia University Law School, where he was an editor of the law review.
Read more about this topic: Eugene Nickerson
Famous quotes containing the words early life, early, life and/or education:
“Many a woman shudders ... at the terrible eclipse of those intellectual powers which in early life seemed prophetic of usefulness and happiness, hence the army of martyrs among our married and unmarried women who, not having cultivated a taste for science, art or literature, form a corps of nervous patients who make fortunes for agreeable physicians ...”
—Sarah M. Grimke (17921873)
“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 mans training begins, its probably the last lesson that he learns thoroughly.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (182595)
“A book is a part of life, a manifestation of life, just as much as a tree or a horse or a star. It obeys its own rhythms, its own laws, whether it be a novel, a play, or a diary. The deep, hidden rhythm of life is always therethat of the pulse, the heart beat.”
—Henry Miller (18911980)
“Nothing in the world can take the place of Persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and Determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan Press On, has solved and will always solve the problems of the human race.”
—Calvin Coolidge (18721933)