Early Life
Huckabee was born in Hope, Arkansas, the son of Mae (née Elder; 1925–1999) and Dorsey Wiles Huckabee (1923–1996), conservative Southern Democrats. He has cited his working-class upbringing as the reason for his de-centralized populist conservative political views; his father worked as a fireman and mechanic, and his mother worked as a clerk at a gas company.
His first job, at 14, was working at a radio station where he read the news and weather. He was elected Governor of Arkansas by his chapter of the American Legion-sponsored Boys State program in 1972 and is a Hugh O'Brian Youth Leadership Foundation alumnus. He was student council vice president at Hope High School during the 1971–72 school year. He was student council president at Hope High School during the 1972–1973 school year. He has one sister, Mrs. Pat Harris, a middle school teacher.
Huckabee married his wife, Janet, on May 25, 1974. He graduated magna cum laude from Ouachita Baptist University, completing his bachelor's degree in Religion in 2½ years before attending Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas. He dropped out of the seminary after one year in order to take a job in Christian broadcasting.
Read more about this topic: Mike Huckabee
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:
“It is not too much to say that next after the passion to learn there is no quality so indispensable to the successful prosecution of science as imagination. Find me a people whose early medicine is not mixed up with magic and incantations, and I will find you a people devoid of all scientific ability.”
—Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914)
“... marathon swimming is the most difficult physical, intellectual and emotional battleground I have encountered, and each time I win, each time I touch the other shore, I feel worthy of any other challenge life has to offer.”
—Diana Nyad (b. 1949)