Early Life and Education
Thomas was born in Winchester, Kentucky, the seventh of the ten children of George and Mary (Rowady) Thomas, immigrants from Tripoli, Lebanon. Thomas has said her father's surname, "Antonious," was anglicized to "Thomas" when he entered the U.S. at Ellis Island, and that her parents could neither read nor write. Thomas was raised mainly in Detroit, Michigan, where her family moved when she was four years old, and where her father ran a grocery store. Of her experience growing up, Thomas has said,
"We were never hyphenated as Arab-Americans. We were American, and I have always rejected the hyphen and I believe all assimilated immigrants should not be designated ethnically. Or separated, of course, by race, or creed either. These are trends that ever try to divide us as a people."She has also said that in Detroit in the 1920s, she came home crying from school, "They wanted to make you feel you weren't 'American'... We were called 'garlic eaters.'. She was raised as a Christian in the Greek Orthodox Church
She attended public schools, deciding to become a journalist while she was in high school. She enrolled at Wayne University (now Wayne State University), in Detroit, receiving a bachelor's degree in English in 1942.
Read more about this topic: Helen Thomas
Famous quotes containing the words early, life and/or education:
“The secret of heaven is kept from age to age. No imprudent, no sociable angel ever dropt an early syllable to answer the longings of saints, the fears of mortals. We should have listened on our knees to any favorite, who, by stricter obedience, had brought his thoughts into parallelism with the celestial currents, and could hint to human ears the scenery and circumstance of the newly parted soul.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“... it is the greatest of all mistakes to begin life with the expectation that it is going to be easy, or with the wish to have it so.”
—Lucy Larcom (1824–1893)
“A two-year-old can be taught to curb his aggressions completely if the parents employ strong enough methods, but the achievement of such control at an early age may be bought at a price which few parents today would be willing to pay. The slow education for control demands much more parental time and patience at the beginning, but the child who learns control in this way will be the child who acquires healthy self-discipline later.”
—Selma H. Fraiberg (20th century)