Early Life
Dirksen was born to Johann Friedrich Dirksen and his wife Antje Conrady, German immigrants who lived in Pekin, Illinois, a small city near Peoria, Illinois. Everett had a fraternal twin, Thomas Dirksen, and also had a brother named Benjamin Harrison, a nod to the Republican leanings of his father, who died when Everett was nine years old.
Dirksen grew up on a farm on Pekin's outskirts, in a section called "Beantown" because immigrants grew beans instead of flowers. He attended the local schools and then entered the University of Minnesota Law School, but dropped out during World War I to enlist in the U.S. Army, serving as a second lieutenant in a field artillery battery. He was a member of the Reformed Church in America, founded by Dutch immigrants.
After the war, Dirksen invested money in an electric washing machine, but that enterprise failed. He then joined his brothers in running a bakery, and also indulged his artistic side by writing a number of unpublished short stories, as well as plays with former classmate Hubert Ropp. His political career began in 1927, when he was elected to the Pekin city council as the city's finance commissioner.
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