Early Life and Education
Warren Magnuson was born in Moorhead, Minnesota. His birth date is given as April 12, 1905, but the actual records of his birth are sealed. He apparently never knew his birth parents; according to various sources, his parents either died within a month of his birth, or his unmarried mother put him up for adoption. He was adopted by William Grant and Emma (née Anderson) Magnuson, who gave him their name. The Magnusons were second-generation Scandinavian immigrants who operated a bar in Moorhead, and who adopted a daughter named Clara a year after adopting Warren. His adoptive father left the family in 1921.
Magnuson attended Moorhead High School, where he played quarterback on the football team and was captain of the baseball team. While attending high school, he ran a YMCA camp, worked in the wheat farms, and delivered newspapers and telegrams in Moorhead and in nearby Fargo, North Dakota. He graduated in 1923, and then enrolled at the University of North Dakota in Grand Forks. In 1924, he transferred to the North Dakota Agricultural College in Fargo, which he attended for a year. He then traveled through Canada for a period of time, riding freight trains and working with threshing crews.
Magnuson followed a high school girlfriend to Seattle, Washington, where he entered the University of Washington in 1925. He was a member of the Theta Chi fraternity, and worked delivering ice as a member of the Teamsters under Dave Beck. He received a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1926, and earned a Bachelor of Laws degree from the University of Washington School of Law in 1929. A Democrat, he first became active in politics in 1928, volunteering for A. Scott Bullitt for governor and Al Smith for president.
Read more about this topic: Warren Magnuson
Famous quotes containing the words early, life and/or education:
“A two-year-old can be taught to curb his aggressions completely if the parents employ strong enough methods, but the achievement of such control at an early age may be bought at a price which few parents today would be willing to pay. The slow education for control demands much more parental time and patience at the beginning, but the child who learns control in this way will be the child who acquires healthy self-discipline later.”
—Selma H. Fraiberg (20th century)
“When Learning’s Triumph o’er her barb’rous Foes
First rear’d the Stage, immortal Shakespear rose;
Each Change of many-colour’d Life he drew,
Exhausted Worlds, and then imagin’d new:”
—Samuel Johnson (1709–1784)
“You are told a lot about your education, but some beautiful, sacred memory, preserved since childhood, is perhaps the best education of all. If a man carries many such memories into life with him, he is saved for the rest of his days. And even if only one good memory is left in our hearts, it may also be the instrument of our salvation one day.”
—Feodor Dostoyevsky (1821–1881)