Early Life
Walter Frederick Mondale was born in Ceylon, Minnesota, the son of Claribel Hope (née Cowan), a part-time music teacher, and Theodore Sigvaard Mondale, a Methodist minister. His paternal grandparents were Norwegian, and his mother, the daughter of an immigrant from Ontario, was of Scottish and English descent. The surname "Mondale" comes from Mundal by Fjærland, in the Sogndal Commune of Norway. He attended public schools. His half-brother Lester Mondale was a Unitarian minister.
Mondale was educated at Macalester College in St. Paul and the University of Minnesota, where he earned his B.A. in political science, graduating in 1951. He did not have enough money to attend law school. He enlisted in the U.S. Army and served for two years at Fort Knox during the Korean War, reaching the rank of corporal. Through the support of the G.I. Bill, he was able to attend law school, and graduated from the University of Minnesota Law School in 1956. While at law school he served on the Minnesota Law Review and as a law clerk in the Minnesota Supreme Court under Justice Thomas F. Gallagher. He began practicing law in Minneapolis, and continued to do so for four years before entering the political arena.
Read more about this topic: Walter Mondale
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:
“Franklin said once in one of his inspired flights of malignity
Early to bed and early to rise
Make a man healthy and wealth and wise.
As if it were any object to a boy to be healthy and wealthy and wise on such terms.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (18351910)
“Our life is March weather, savage and serene in one hour.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (18031882)