Early Life
Harmon was born in Burbank, California. His father was University of Michigan football All-America and Heisman Trophy winner, Tom Harmon. His mother was actress and artist, Elyse Knox (née Elsie Lillian Kornbrath). Harmon has two older sisters, actress and painter Kristin Nelson, the former wife of singer Ricky Nelson, and actress-model Kelly Harmon, who was once married to car magnate John DeLorean. His maternal grandparents were Austrian immigrants.
After attending Los Angeles Pierce College as a student and quarterback, Harmon transferred to the University of California, Los Angeles, and following in his father's athletic footsteps was the starting quarterback for the UCLA Bruins football team in 1972 and 1973. In UCLA's 1972 season he engineered a stunning upset of the two-time defending national champion, Nebraska Cornhuskers. He received the National Football Foundation Award for All-Round Excellence in 1973. In his two years as quarterback in coach Pepper Rodgers' wishbone offense, UCLA won 17 games and lost only 5. He graduated from UCLA with a B.A. in Communication cum laude in 1974.
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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)