Youth
Robert David Muldoon was born to parents Jim and Amie Muldoon in Auckland in 1921.
At age five Muldoon slipped while playing on the front gate, damaging his cheek and resulting in a distinctive scar. At age eight, Muldoon's father was admitted to hospital, where he died nearly 20 years later. This left Muldoon's mother to raise him on her own. During this time Muldoon came under the strong formative influence of his fiercely intelligent, iron-willed maternal grandmother, Jerusha, a committed socialist. Though Muldoon never accepted her creed, he did develop under her influence a potent ambition, a consuming interest in politics, and an abiding respect for New Zealand's welfare state. A brilliant student at school, Muldoon won a scholarship to attend Mount Albert Grammar School from 1933 to 1936. He left school at age 15, finding work at Fletcher Construction as an arrears clerk.
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Famous quotes containing the word youth:
“Could beauty be beaten out,
O youth the cities have sent
to strike at each other’s strength,
it is you who have kept her alight.”
—Hilda Doolittle (1886–1961)
“I’ve never understood why people consider youth a time of freedom and joy. It’s probably because they have forgotten their own.”
—Margaret Atwood (b. 1939)
“... though it is by no means requisite that the American women should emulate the men in the pursuit of the whale, the felling of the forest, or the shooting of wild turkeys, they might, with advantage, be taught in early youth to excel in the race, to hit a mark, to swim, and in short to use every exercise which could impart vigor to their frames and independence to their minds.”
—Frances Wright (1795–1852)