Eugene Nickerson - Early Life and Education

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.