Early Life
Smothers was born at the Fort Jay army post hospital on Governors Island in New York City, the son of Ruth (née Remick), a homemaker; and Major Thomas B. Smothers, an army officer. After moving to California, he graduated from Redondo Union High School in Redondo Beach, California. He was a competitive unicyclist, and a state champion gymnast in the parallel bars. Smothers later attended San José State University, then known as San José State College. At SJSC, Smothers participated both in gymnastics and pole vault for the track team (coached by Lloyd (Bud) Winter).
Read more about this topic: Yo-Yo Man
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:
“The girl must early be impressed with the idea that she is to be “a hand, not a mouth”; a worker, and not a drone, in the great hive of human activity. Like the boy, she must be taught to look forward to a life of self-dependence, and early prepare herself for some trade or profession.”
—Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902)
“If anything characterizes the cultural life of the seventies in America, it is an insistence on preventing failures of communication.”
—Richard Dean Rosen (b. 1949)