Early Life and Career
Garner was born Jack Edward Bumgarner in Norman, Oklahoma, on September 19, 1926, to Mildred Scott Meek and Weldon Warren “Bill” Bumgarner. He was the second of three brothers including actor James Garner (youngest) and Charles Bumgarner (oldest). The family operated a general store on Denver Corner in eastern Norman. The brothers were sent to live with relatives after their mother died, while Garner's father remarried several times.
Garner was a star athlete at Norman High School, playing on the state championship basketball team in 1945. Jack Garner played as a minor league baseball pitcher for a team affiliate with the Pittsburgh Pirates for eleven years. He then worked for several golf courses in Florida after leaving the minor leagues. Years later, brother James Garner wrote about Garner's athletic abilities in his memoir, "At Norman High, he was a point guard on a championship basketball team and quarterbacked an all-state football team...But his best sport was baseball: Jack was a pitcher in the Pittsburgh Pirates organization for 11 years. He was a better athlete than I was and a lot more outgoing. I was always in his footsteps." Later in life, Garner became a golf pro at the Oakmont Country Club in Glendale, California. His golf experience allowed him to coach at the country club and elsewhere. Garner taught Dan Aykroyd, his co-star in the 1996 film, My Fellow Americans, to properly swing a golf club for a scene in that movie.
Read more about this topic: Jack Garner
Famous quotes containing the words early, life and/or career:
“If you are willing to inconvenience yourself in the name of discipline, the battle is half over. Leave Grandma’s early if the children are acting impossible. Depart the ballpark in the sixth inning if you’ve warned the kids and their behavior is still poor. If we do something like this once, our kids will remember it for a long time.”
—Fred G. Gosman (20th century)
“Who does not see that I have taken a road along which I shall go, without stopping and without effort, as long as there is ink and paper in the world? I cannot keep a record of my life by my actions; fortune places them too low. I keep it by my thoughts.”
—Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592)
“A black boxer’s career is the perfect metaphor for the career of a black male. Every day is like being in the gym, sparring with impersonal opponents as one faces the rudeness and hostility that a black male must confront in the United States, where he is the object of both fear and fascination.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)