Thomas E. Latimer - Early Life

Early Life

Latimer was born in 1879 on a farm in Hilliard, Ohio. He attended Ohio State University and played football there until his father's death led him to return to the family farm. He taught school briefly and eventually joined the Klondike Gold Rush at the age of 20 before moving on to work in silver and lead mines in Idaho and gold mines in Mexico.

Latimer returned to Ohio in 1905 and married a woman from Hilliard named May Helser. The couple separated three months later and quickly divorced, after which May bore a son in 1906. Latimer lost touch with his former wife but heard that a son had been born and died soon after. That was not true, though Latimer apparently would not know otherwise for nearly 30 years. As Time magazine reported in 1935, Latimer's son, Ira - at that time a Chicago radio news commentator who had suspected that Thomas was his father and had been brought up as Ira Jenkins by his mother and her second husband - read of Latimer's election as Minneapolis mayor and became convinced of his paternity upon learning that Thomas had been born in Hilliard. As the brief Time write-up noted, when confronted with his son Ira, Thomas Latimer "demanded proof, got it" and thus among the "chief guests at his inauguration...were his son, daughter-in-law, two-year-old grandson."

After breaking with May Helser, Latimer had continued his education. He earned bachelor's and master's degrees and served as school superintendent in Juneau, Alaska. Latimer eventually left Alaska and returned to the United States in 1912 (the same year Alaska was granted territorial status) where he would embark on a career in law.