Childhood and Early Life
Atwater was born in Atlanta, Georgia, to Harvey Dillard, an insurance adjustor, and Alma "Toddy" Page Atwater. He had two siblings, Ann and Joe. He grew up in Aiken, South Carolina, where his childhood was marred with tragedy when his three-year-old brother, Joe, was scalded to death, when he pulled a deep fryer full of hot oil on himself.
As a teenager in Columbia, South Carolina, Atwater played guitar in a rock band, The Upsetters Revue. Even at the height of his political power, he would often play concerts in clubs and church basements, solo or with B.B. King, in the Washington, D.C. area. He released an album called "Red, Hot And Blue" on Curb Records, featuring Carla Thomas, Isaac Hayes, Sam Moore, Chuck Jackson, and B.B. King, who got co-billing with Atwater. Robert Hilburn wrote about the album in the Los Angeles Times on April 5, 1990: "The most entertaining thing about this ensemble salute to spicy Memphis-style '50s and '60s R&B is the way it lets you surprise your friends. Play a selection such as 'Knock on Wood' or 'Bad Boy' for someone without identifying the singer, then watch their eyes bulge when you reveal that it's the controversial national chairman of the Republican Party... Lee Atwater."
During the 1960s Atwater briefly played backup guitar for Percy Sledge, and frequently played with bluesmen such as B.B. King.
In 1970, Atwater graduated from Newberry College, a small private Lutheran institution in Newberry, South Carolina, where he was a member of the Tau Kappa Epsilon fraternity. At Newberry, Atwater served as the governor of the South Carolina Student Legislature. Atwater earned a master of arts degree in communications from the University of South Carolina in 1977. Atwater married his wife, Sally Dunbar, in 1978; they had three children, Sara Lee, Ashley Page, and Sally Theodosia.
Read more about this topic: Lee Atwater
Famous quotes containing the words childhood and, childhood, early and/or life:
“Childhood and youth are vanity.”
—Bible: Hebrew Ecclesiastes 11:10.
“[Children] do not yet lie to themselves and therefore have not entered upon that important tacit agreement which marks admission into the adult world, to wit, that I will respect your lies if you will agree to let mine alone. That unwritten contract is one of the clear dividing lines between the world of childhood and the world of adulthood.”
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“Their rebukes have never made me angry, because I have always wondered why they did not rebuke me more. They should have. Their friendly praise has been one of the sweetest, most warming things in my life in the theater. I do go on the stage unafraid of them and with love in my heart for them.”
—Minnie Maddern Fiske (1865–1932)