Biography
William Purtell was born in a tenement neighborhood of Hartford, Connecticut. He was the son of Thomas Michael and Nora Mary (née O'Connor) Purtell, who were tobacco workers. He received his early education at St. Patrick's School, and attended Hartford Public High School for two years before dropping out at age 15. He then worked as a janitor, water boy, and car checker for the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad.
During World War I, he served with the radio section of the U.S. Army Expeditionary Force in France, being discharged as a corporal in 1919. That same year, he married Katherine Elizabeth Cassidy; the couple had a son, William, and a daughter, Margaret.
Read more about this topic: William A. Purtell
Famous quotes containing the word biography:
“The best part of a writer’s biography is not the record of his adventures but the story of his style.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)
“A biography is like a handshake down the years, that can become an arm-wrestle.”
—Richard Holmes (b. 1945)
“A great biography should, like the close of a great drama, leave behind it a feeling of serenity. We collect into a small bunch the flowers, the few flowers, which brought sweetness into a life, and present it as an offering to an accomplished destiny. It is the dying refrain of a completed song, the final verse of a finished poem.”
—André Maurois (1885–1967)