Early Life
Aylward was born of a working-class family in Edmonton, London in 1902. Her parents were Thomas John Aylward and Rodina Florence Aylward (nee Whiskin). Her siblings were Laurence, and Violet. Although she became a domestic worker (housemaid) at an early age, she always had an ambition to go overseas as a missionary, and studied with great determination in order to be fitted for the role, only to be turned down because her academic background was inadequate and the China Inland Mission to which she applied was convinced that it was not possible to learn the language at her age.
Her determination was such that, in 1932, she spent her life savings on a passage to Yuncheng, Shanxi Province, China. The perilous trip took her across Siberia.
Read more about this topic: Gladys Aylward
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:
“The science, the art, the jurisprudence, the chief political and social theories, of the modern world have grown out of Greece and Rome—not by favor of, but in the teeth of, the fundamental teachings of early Christianity, to which science, art, and any serious occupation with the things of this world were alike despicable.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)
“Being so wrong about her makes me wonder now how often I am utterly wrong about myself. And how wrong she might have been about her mother, how wrong he might have been about his father, how much of family life is a vast web of misunderstandings, a tinted and touched-up family portrait, an accurate representation of fact that leaves out only the essential truth.”
—Anna Quindlen (b. 1952)