Early Life
Holmes was the fourth of twelve children born to John and Flossie Holmes. When the family moved to Easton in 1954, Holmes' father went to Connecticut, where he worked as a gardener until his death in 1970. He visited his family every three weeks. "He didn't forsake us," said Flossie Holmes. "He just didn't have anything to give." The family survived on welfare.
To help support his family, Holmes dropped out of school when he was in the seventh grade and went to work at a car wash for $1 an hour. He later drove a dump truck and worked in a quarry.
Read more about this topic: Larry Holmes
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)
“the cluttered eyes
of early mysterious night.”
—Imamu Amiri Baraka (b. 1934)
“I am Anne Rutledge who sleep beneath these weeds,
Beloved in life of Abraham Lincoln,
Wedded to him, not through union,
But through separation”
—Edgar Lee Masters (1869–1950)