Early Life and Education
Moynihan was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, the son of Margaret Ann (née Phipps), a homemaker, and John Henry Moynihan, a reporter for a daily newspaper in Tulsa. He moved to New York City at the age of six. Brought up in a poor neighborhood, he shined shoes, attended various public, private, and parochial schools, and ultimately graduated from Benjamin Franklin High School in East Harlem. He was a parishioner of St. Raphael's Church (New York City), Hell's Kitchen / Clinton, and also cast his first vote in that church. He and his brother, Michael Willard Moynihan, spent most of their childhood summers at his grandfather's farm in Bluffton, Indiana. After high school, Moynihan worked as a longshoreman before entering City College of New York (CCNY), which at that time provided free higher education.
After a year at CCNY, he joined the United States Navy, receiving V-12 officer training at Tufts University, where he graduated with a B.A. He was on active duty from 1944 to 1947, last serving as gunnery officer of the USS Quirinus. He received an M.A. and Ph.D. in sociology from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, also at Tufts. Moynihan then studied as a Fulbright fellow at the London School of Economics. Many years later, he received an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from Tufts.
Read more about this topic: Daniel Patrick Moynihan
Famous quotes containing the words early, life and/or education:
“I doubt that I would have taken so many leaps in my own writing or been as clear about my feminist and political commitments if I had not been anointed as early as I was. Some major form of recognition seems to have to mark a woman’s career for her to be able to go out on a limb without having her credentials questioned.”
—Ruth Behar (b. 1956)
“It’s not that we have too much mother, but too little father. We can’t forgive our mothers for taking the place of our fathers until we are ready to see that the point of a man’s life is to be a father and a mentor, and we can’t do that because we don’t know how we would be a father or a mentor when we never had one.”
—Frank Pittman (20th century)
“Those who first introduced compulsory education into American life knew exactly why children should go to school and learn to read: to save their souls.... Consistent with this goal, the first book written and printed for children in America was titled Spiritual Milk for Boston Babes in either England, drawn from the Breasts of both Testaments for their Souls’ Nourishment.”
—Dorothy H. Cohen (20th century)