Early Life
Humes was born in Douglas, Arizona. His father was a chemical engineer from Michigan who studied at McGill. His mother, Alexandra Elizabeth McGonnigle, came from Montreal. Both parents were Christian Science practitioners.
Humes grew up in Princeton, New Jersey, graduating from Princeton High. It was there that he won his lifelong nickname, when his classmates dubbed him Doc after "Doc Huer", a brilliant scientist/nutty professor in Buck Rogers, a popular comic strip.
He attended MIT, and did a stint in the United States Navy, but left in 1948 to go to Paris.
Read more about this topic: Harold L. Humes
Famous quotes containing the words early life, early and/or life:
“... goodness is of a modest nature, easily discouraged, and when much elbowed in early life by unabashed vices, is apt to retire into extreme privacy, so that it is more easily believed in by those who construct a selfish old gentleman theoretically, than by those who form the narrower judgments based on his personal acquaintance.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“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 (1792–1873)
“The moment one accosts a stranger or is accosted by him is above all in this life the moment of drama.... Whoever we meet watches us intently at the quick, strange moment of meeting, to see whether we are disposed to be friendly.”
—Haniel Long (1888–1956)