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:
“Early education can only promise to help make the third and fourth and fifth years of life good ones. It cannot insure without fail that any tomorrow will be successful. Nothing “fixes” a child for life, no matter what happens next. But exciting, pleasing early experiences are seldom sloughed off. They go with the child, on into first grade, on into the child’s long life ahead.”
—James L. Hymes, Jr. (20th century)
“At this moment, who would not remain persuaded that these women were virtuous? Are they not the flower of the country? Are they all not fresh, ravishing, intoxicating with beauty, youth, life and love? To believe in their virtue is a kind of social religion; because they are the world’s ornament and the glory of France.”
—Honoré De Balzac (1799–1850)
“The fetish of the great university, of expensive colleges for young women, is too often simply a fetish. It is not based on a genuine desire for learning. Education today need not be sought at any great distance. It is largely compounded of two things, of a certain snobbishness on the part of parents, and of escape from home on the part of youth. And to those who must earn quickly it is often sheer waste of time. Very few colleges prepare their students for any special work.”
—Mary Roberts Rinehart (1876–1958)