ABSTRACT
Norman was born in 1928 in a large Midwestern city where he grew up and attended school until the age of 15. After working at a series of jobs in order to augment the family's relatively meager income, Norman entered the United States Army in 1946 at the age of 18 and was given an honorable medical discharge 15 months later. Norman's maternal grandfather was German; the grandmother was Polish. A compromise of sorts was reached by speaking Polish in the home and sending their daughter—Norman's mother—to a German school. Norman's mother went to work at the age of thirteen to help support the family. For understandable reasons she was determined not to marry. Norman was born in 1928 at home about a year after his parents' marriage. His mother had a cold and fever at the time and, in a generally weakened condition, gave birth three weeks prematurely.
