Happy Chandler - Early Life

Early Life

Albert Benjamin Chandler was born in the farming community of Corydon, Kentucky in 1898. He was the eldest child of Joseph Sephus and Callie (Saunders) Chandler. Chandler's father allegedly rescued his mother from an orphanage and married her when she was fifteen, though no record of their marriage has ever been found. In 1899, Chandler's brother Robert was born. Two years later, their mother, still in her teens and unable to cope with raising two young children, abandoned the family. She fled the state and left her sons with their father. In his autobiography, Chandler said his mother leaving when them was his earliest memory. Years later, he sought his mother and found her living in Jacksonville, Florida. She had married again and he had three half-siblings. His full brother, Robert Chandler, died when he fell from a cherry tree when he was 13 years old.

Chandler was raised by his father and relatives, and by age eight virtually supported himself financially from his paper route and doing odd jobs in his community. In 1917 he graduated from Corydon High School, While he had been captain of the baseball and football teams. His father wanted him to study for the ministry, but Chandler instead entered Transylvania College (now Transylvania University) in Lexington, Kentucky. It was there that he received his lifelong nickname "Happy" because of his jovial nature. He paid for his education by doing chores for the local citizens. Chander was captain of Transylvania's basketball and baseball teams and the quarterback of the football team. He was a teammate of Dutch Meyer, a future member of the College Football Hall of Fame. He also joined the Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity and the Omicron Delta Kappa honor society. In 1918, during World War I, the United States Army started a Student Officers' Training Corps at Transylvania, and Chandler began training to be an officer; the war ended before he was called to active duty.

In 1920, Chandler pitched a no-hitter for Grafton, North Dakota's team in the Red River Valley League. He attended a professional baseball tryout in Saskatoon, but did not make the team. He returned to Transylvania and received a Bachelor of Arts degree in June 1921. He then signed with the Class D baseball team the Lexington Reos, where he was a teammate of future Hall of Famer Earle Combs. Briefly considering a career in baseball, he finally decided to study law. He entered Harvard Law School that same year, paying his way by coaching high school sports in Wellesley, Massachusetts. His former teammate Charlie Moran, then coaching the Centre College Praying Colonels football team in Danville, Kentucky, asked him to scout the national powerhouse Harvard Crimson, an upcoming opponent for Centre. Chandler took copious notes for Moran, and Centre defeated Harvard 6–0 in what is considered one of the greatest college football upsets of all time.

After a year, Chandler was not able to afford Harvard. He returned to Kentucky and continued at the University of Kentucky College of Law, coaching high school sports in Versailles and women's basketball at the University of Kentucky. He was an assistant coach and scout for Charlie Moran at Centre, and coached the freshman football team there. A member of the Order of the Coif, he received Bachelor of Laws degree in 1924. He was admitted to the bar the following year and opened his law practice in Versailles.

On November 12, 1925, Chandler married Mildred Watkins, a teacher at the Margaret Hall School for Girls. They would have four children: Marcella, Mildred ("Mimi"), Albert, Jr., and Joseph Daniel. Mimi Chandler played one of the four singing sisters in the 1944 film And the Angels Sing, appearing with Dorothy Lamour, Betty Hutton, and Diana Lynn before abandoning acting and working for the Kentucky Department of Tourism.

For the next five years, Chandler simultaneously practiced law, coached high school sports, and served as a scout for Centre. He joined numerous fraternal organizations including the Freemasons, Shriners, Knights Templar, Forty and Eight, and Optimist International.