Early Life
Pitts was born in East Palestine, Ohio on June 13, 1921. He was the only child of Howard Earl ("Doc") Pitts (1889–1951), a veterinarian from Marietta, Ohio, who fought in France with the Expeditionary Forces during WWI. Before returning to the States, Doc married Denyse Dinin in Decize. When Jesse (named after Jess Willard, the boxer) was 7, his parents separated and he went to France with his mother. He did not see his father again until a summer vacation in 1937 where he met his numerous cousins in Marietta, Ohio.
Pitts developed an early interest in politics in France and, at age 15, joined the communist party and distributed leaflets. At 16, French police turned him back from the Spanish frontier as he sought to join the Spanish Civil War.
Read more about this topic: Jesse R. Pitts
Famous quotes related to early 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)