Early Life
He was born in Mason City, Iowa to John David Willson and Rosalie Reiniger Willson, and had a brother two years older, John Cedrick, and a sister 12 years older, Lucille. He attended Frank Damrosch's Institute of Musical Art (later The Juilliard School) in New York City. He married his high school sweetheart, Elizabeth "Peggy" Wilson on August 29, 1920. A flute and piccolo player, Willson was a member of John Philip Sousa's band (1921–1923), and the New York Philharmonic Orchestra under Arturo Toscanini (1924–1929). Willson then moved to San Francisco, California as the concert director for radio station KFRC, and then as a musical director for the NBC radio network in Hollywood.
Read more about this topic: Meredith Willson
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:
“Quintilian [educational writer in Rome around A.D. 100] thought that the earliest years of the child’s life were crucial. Education should start earlier than age seven, within the family. It should not be so hard as to give the child an aversion to learning. Rather, these early lessons would take the form of play—that embryonic notion of kindergarten.”
—C. John Sommerville (20th century)
“Subject the material world to the higher ends by understanding it in all its relations to daily life and action.”
—Ellen Henrietta Swallow Richards (1842–1911)