Early Life
Greg Mortenson was born to Lutheran missionary parents in Rochester, Minnesota. Through the leadership of the Lutheran Church, Mortenson's father, Irvin ("Dempsey"), was a fundraiser for and development director of the Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Centre, Tanzania's first teaching hospital. Mortenson's mother, Jerene, was the founding principal of International School Moshi. Mortenson spent his early childhood and adolescence in Tanzania, East Africa, where he learned to speak Swahili fluently. In the early 1970s, when he was 15 years old, Mortenson and his family left Tanzania and moved back to Minnesota. He attended Ramsey High School in Roseville, Minnesota, from 1973 to 1975. After high school, Mortenson served in the U.S. Army in Germany from 1975 to 1977 as a medic and was awarded the Army Commendation Medal. Following his discharge, he attended Concordia College in Moorhead, Minnesota, from 1977 to 1979 on an athletic (football) scholarship. Mortenson graduated from the University of South Dakota in 1983 with a bachelor's degree in liberal studies and an associate's degree in nursing.
Read more about this topic: Greg Mortenson
Famous quotes containing the words early life, early and/or life:
“Many a woman shudders ... at the terrible eclipse of those intellectual powers which in early life seemed prophetic of usefulness and happiness, hence the army of martyrs among our married and unmarried women who, not having cultivated a taste for science, art or literature, form a corps of nervous patients who make fortunes for agreeable physicians ...”
—Sarah M. Grimke (1792–1873)
“If you are willing to inconvenience yourself in the name of discipline, the battle is half over. Leave Grandma’s early if the children are acting impossible. Depart the ballpark in the sixth inning if you’ve warned the kids and their behavior is still poor. If we do something like this once, our kids will remember it for a long time.”
—Fred G. Gosman (20th century)
“She never dies, but lasteth
In life of lover’s heart;
He ever dies that wasteth
In love his chiefest part.”
—Sir Philip Sidney (1554–1586)