Gale W. Mc Gee - Early Life

Early Life

McGee was born in Lincoln, Nebraska, on March 17, 1915. He attended public schools, and had planned to study law at university, but was forced by the Great Depression to attend the State Teachers College in Wayne, Nebraska, instead. He graduated from the Teachers College in 1936, and worked as a high school teacher while studying for a master's degree in history at the University of Colorado. He continued as a college instructor at Nebraska Wesleyan University, Iowa State College, and Notre Dame. In 1946 McGee received his Ph.D. in history from the University of Chicago and accepted a position as a professor of American History at the University of Wyoming. McGee also served as chair of the University of Wyoming’s Institute of International Affairs, which he founded. In addition, McGee took leave of the University of Wyoming to serve as a Carnegie Research Fellow in New York with the Council on Foreign Relations from 1952 to 1953.