Early Life and Family
Wilson was born in Cincinnati, Ohio and grew up in Richmond, Virginia, the son of Harrison Benjamin Wilson III, a lawyer, and Tammy T. Wilson, a legal nurse consultant. He has an older brother, Harrison IV, and a younger sister, Anna. Wilson started playing football with his dad and brother at the age of four.
Wilson's ethnicity is mostly African American, though he also has some Native American ancestry. His great-great-grandfather was a slave to a Confederate colonel and was freed after the American Civil War. Wilson's grandfather, Harrison B. Wilson Jr., is a former president of Norfolk State University who played football and basketball at Kentucky State University. His father played football and baseball at Dartmouth and was a wide receiver for the San Diego Chargers preseason squad in 1980. Wilson's brother played football and baseball at the University of Richmond, and his sister is considered one of the top high school basketball prospects in the country.
Wilson's father died on June 9, 2010 at age 55 due to complications from diabetes.
Read more about this topic: Russell Wilson
Famous quotes containing the words early, life and/or family:
“We have been told over and over about the importance of bonding to our children. Rarely do we hear about the skill of letting go, or, as one parent said, that we raise our children to leave us. Early childhood, as our kids gain skills and eagerly want some distance from us, is a time to build a kind of adult-child balance which permits both of us room.”
—Joan Sheingold Ditzion (20th century)
“The woods were as fresh and full of vegetable life as a lichen in wet weather, and contained many interesting plants; but unless they are of white pine, they are treated with as little respect here as a mildew, and in the other case they are only the more quickly cut down.”
—Henry David Thoreau (18171862)
“The family: I believe more unhappiness comes from this source than from any otherI mean the attempt to prolong family connection unduly, and to make people hang together artificially who would never naturally do so.”
—Samuel Butler (18351902)