Beginnings
Born in Wellsville, New York, to Greek immigrants James and Eleni Rigas who sought a better life in the U.S. for their children, John had three siblings: Gus, Mary and Katherine. His first job was, at the age of nine, busing tables. After graduating from Wellsville High School, he enlisted in the U.S. Army and was placed in an armored infantry division in 1943 and he saw combat in France.
After the war ended, he returned to life in Wellsville and soon afterward enrolled at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York. He studied engineering and earned a bachelor of science degree in management engineering. He was also a member of the Nu Theta Chapter of Phi Mu Delta. He then returned to Wellsville, only to take a job with the Sylvania corporation in Emporium, Pennsylvania.
Read more about this topic: John Rigas
Famous quotes containing the word beginnings:
“The beginnings of altruism can be seen in children as early as the age of two. How then can we be so concerned that they count by the age of three, read by four, and walk with their hands across the overhead parallel bars by five, and not be concerned that they act with kindness to others?”
—Neil Kurshan (20th century)
“Let us, then, take our compass; we are something, and we are not everything. The nature of our existence hides from us the knowledge of first beginnings which are born of the nothing; and the littleness of our being conceals from us the sight of the infinite. Our intellect holds the same position in the world of thought as our body occupies in the expanse of nature.”
—Blaise Pascal (1623–1662)
“Those newspapers of the nation which most loudly cried dictatorship against me would have been the first to justify the beginnings of dictatorship by somebody else.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)