Family and Early Life
Mardian's father, Samuel, was from the Armenian town of Hadjin in the Velayat of Adana in the Ottoman Empire (present day Saimbeyli in Mediterranean Turkey). He was born Samuel Zeligian into a Christian family and was a member of Second Congregational Church in Hadjin. Following the massacre of 35,000 Armenians in Adana in 1909 and the siege of Christian Hadjin Samuel moved his family and was in the United States by 1912. Samuel settled in California and supported progressive politicians such as Hiram Johnson and Franklin D. Roosevelt. However Samuel Mardian's four sons adopted free-market politics. Robert Mardian's brother Samuel Mardian Jr. served as Mayor of Phoenix, Arizona and was a leading supporter of Barry Goldwater. Samuel Jr. took over the family construction business and developed it into a multi-million dollar concern.
Robert Mardian went to public school in Pasadena, California followed by Columbia University, North Dakota State Teachers College, and the University of California, Santa Barbara. While serving in the United States Navy he met and married Dorothy Denniss in 1946. They had three sons. Mardian was awarded a law degree from the University of Southern California in 1949. After leaving law school he went into private practice as a corporate lawyer.
Read more about this topic: Robert Mardian
Famous quotes containing the words family, early and/or life:
“I think the ideal situation for a family is to be completely incestuous.”
—William Burroughs (b. 1914)
“Pray be always in motion. Early in the morning go and see things; and the rest of the day go and see people. If you stay but a week at a place, and that an insignificant one, see, however, all that is to be seen there; know as many people, and get into as many houses as ever you can.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)
“No civilization ... would ever have been possible without a framework of stability, to provide the wherein for the flux of change. Foremost among the stabilizing factors, more enduring than customs, manners and traditions, are the legal systems that regulate our life in the world and our daily affairs with each other.”
—Hannah Arendt (1906–1975)