George McGovern - Early Years and Early Education

Early Years and Early Education

McGovern was born in the 600‑person farming community of Avon, South Dakota. His father, Rev. Joseph C. McGovern, born in 1868, was pastor of the local Wesleyan Methodist Church there. Joseph – the son of an alcoholic who had immigrated from Ireland – had grown up in several states, working in coal mines from the age of nine and parentless from the age of thirteen. He was then a professional baseball player in the minor leagues, but had given it up due to his teammates' heavy drinking, gambling and womanizing, and entered the seminary instead. George's mother was the former Frances McLean, born c. 1890 in Dundas, Toronto, Canada; her family had later moved to Calgary and then she came to South Dakota looking for work as a secretary. George was the second oldest of four children. Joseph McGovern's salary never reached $100 per month, and he often received compensation in the form of potatoes, cabbages, or other food items. Joseph and Frances McGovern were both firm Republicans, but were not politically active or doctrinaire.

When George was about three years old, the family moved to Calgary for a while to be near Frances' ailing mother, and he formed memories of events such as the Calgary Stampede. While the McGoverns were living there, Charles Lindbergh's solo transatlantic flight in 1927 made a great impression upon George, as it did upon many members of his generation. When George was six, the family returned to the United States and moved to Mitchell, South Dakota, a community of 12,000. McGovern attended public schools there and was an average student. He was painfully shy as a child and was afraid to speak in class during first grade. His only unapproved behavior was going to see movies, which were among the worldly amusements forbidden to good Wesleyan Methodists. Otherwise he had a normal childhood marked by visits to the renowned Mitchell Corn Palace and "a sense of belonging to a particular place and knowing your part in it". He would, however, long remember the Dust Bowl storms and grasshopper plagues that swept the prairie states during the Great Depression. The McGovern family lived on the edge of the poverty line for much of the 1920s and 1930s. Growing up amid that lack of affluence gave young George a lifelong sympathy for underpaid workers and struggling farmers. He was influenced by the currents of populism and agrarian unrest and by the "practical divinity" teachings of cleric John Wesley that sought to fight poverty, injustice, and ignorance.

When he was in seventh grade, a gym teacher called him a "physical coward" for being afraid to dive headfirst and somersault over a gymnastics vaulting horse; the incident troubled him psychologically. George attended Mitchell High School, where he was a solid but unspectacular member of the track team. A turning point came when his tenth-grade English teacher recruited him for the debate team, where he became quite active. His high-school debate coach proved to be a great influence in his life, and McGovern spent many hours honing his meticulous, if colorless, forensic style. McGovern and his debating partner won events in his area and gained renown in a state where debating was passionately followed by the general public. Debate changed McGovern's life, giving him a chance to explore ideas to their logical end, broadening his perspective, and instilling a sense of personal and social confidence. He graduated in 1940 in the top ten percent of his class.

McGovern enrolled at small Dakota Wesleyan University in Mitchell and became a star student there. He supplemented a forensic scholarship by working a variety of odd jobs. With World War II underway overseas, McGovern still felt insecure about his own courage. To prove himself, McGovern took flying lessons in an Aeronca aircraft and received a pilot's license through the government's Civilian Pilot Training Program. McGovern recalled: "Frankly, I was scared to death on that first solo flight. But when I walked away from it, I had an enormous feeling of satisfaction that I had taken the thing off the ground and landed it without tearing the wings off." In April 1941, McGovern began dating fellow student Eleanor Stegeberg, who had grown up in Woonsocket, South Dakota. They had first encountered each other during a high school debate in which Eleanor and her twin sister Ila defeated McGovern and his partner.

McGovern was listening to a radio broadcast of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra for a sophomore-year music appreciation class when he heard the news of the December 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor. Within days he drove to Omaha, Nebraska, and volunteered to join the United States Army Air Forces. The military accepted him, but they did not yet have enough airfields, aircraft, or instructors to start training all the volunteers, so McGovern stayed at Dakota Wesleyan. George and Eleanor became engaged, but initially decided not to marry until the war was over. During his sophomore year, McGovern won the statewide intercollegiate South Dakota Peace Oratory Contest with a speech called "My Brother's Keeper", which was later selected by the National Council of Churches as one of the nation's twelve best orations of 1942. McGovern was also elected president of his sophomore and junior classes. In February 1943, during his junior year, he and a partner won a national debate tournament at North Dakota State University that featured competitors from over one hundred schools; upon his return to campus, he discovered that the Army had finally called him up.