Early in Life
Rich was born in Manila in the Philippines, one of the five children of British lumber mill superintendent Isidore Rich and his French wife, Annie, the daughter of one of his paternal grandfather's Jewish customers who resided in Alexandria, Egypt. The Rich family was one of the first Jewish families to settle in Manila. Having fled the Philippines just weeks before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, they moved to the United States in 1942, where Ben Rich became a naturalized US citizen. He worked (with his father) in a Los Angeles, California machine shop during World War II, and studied at the city's Hamilton High School. After the war he started his college education when he was 21, majoring in mechanical engineering at UC Berkeley, followed by a master's degree in aeronautical engineering at UCLA, instead of in the medical field as he originally planned.
Read more about this topic: Ben Rich
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:
“Yet, haply, in some lull of life,
Some Truce of God which breaks its strife,
The worldling’s eyes shall gather dew,
Dreaming in throngful city ways
Of winter joys his boyhood knew;
And dear and early friends—the few”
—John Greenleaf Whittier (1807–1892)
“The man of large and conspicuous public service in civil life must be content without the Presidency. Still more, the availability of a popular man in a doubtful State will secure him the prize in a close contest against the first statesman of the country whose State is safe.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)