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From Waiter to
White House: How 7 U.S. Presidents Worked Their Way Through College
One said that washing coeds' dishes was the best job he
ever had.
Next to being born in a log cabin, which doesn’t happen
much anymore,
one of the best things presidential aspirants can brag
about is working their way through college.
Unfortunately, that, too, may be going the way of the
knotty-pine birthplace.
The ever-rising cost of a degree has made it all but
impossible for even the most ambitious young striver to pay the bill by
waiting tables or mopping the floors of Old Main.
Few of the current presidential candidates, no matter how
prone to embellishment,
can make much of a claim to toiling through their college
years.
Even incumbent President Barack Obama, hardly a child of
wealth, seems to have financed
his education at Occidental College and then Columbia
University largely with scholarships, student loans, and support from a
generous grandmother,
according to biographer David Maraniss.
But it wasn’t always so.
As recently as Bill Clinton, U.S.
presidents have prided themselves on earning their education
the hard way.
Here’s how seven 20th century presidents put
themselves through college
and on the path to the White House. We may never see
their like again.
Photo Quest. Getty images.
Jimmy Carter as an ensign in the U.S. Navy
Jimmy Carter as an ensign in the U.S. Navy
President from 1977 to 1981
U.S. Naval Academy, Class of 1947
James Earl Carter, Jr., reportedly decided at age 7 that
he planned to attend
the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md., and even sent
away for a catalog,
not mentioning that he was still in elementary school.
According to biographer Peter G. Bourne, the catalog “instantly became a
treasured possession,” that the boy carefully memorized.
One reason a military academy appealed to young Carter was
that tuition was free,
and he didn’t want his parents to have to pay for
college. When the time came for him to apply, however, his local congressman
didn’t provide the recommendation he needed.
So Carter enrolled instead at a two-year school, Georgia
Southwestern College,
now Georgia Southwestern State University.
Carter helped pay his $204 annual tuition by working as a
lab assistant
and substitute teaching freshman science classes. He
eventually won an appointment
to Annapolis, but had to take additional courses at Georgia
Tech before the academy
would let him begin. He entered Annapolis in 1943 and
graduated three years later.
Matthew Polak. Sygma/Corbis
Bill Clinton at Oxford University 1968,
after his graduation from Georgetown.
Bill Clinton
at Oxford University in the summer of 1968,
after his graduation from Georgetown
President from 1993 to 2001
Georgetown University, Class of 1968
When the time came for young William Jefferson Clinton to
go to college, he applied to just one, he writes in his memoir, My Life:
the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service.
This despite the fact that he had never seen Georgetown
and had no interest in foreign service.
But he was determined to go to college in Washington,
D.C., and he believed Georgetown
was his best option. Although his parents had to stretch
to afford the $1,200 tuition
and $700 for room, board, and incidentals, they went with
the plan.
Still, his budget was so tight that decades later he
could still remember that a Royal Crown Cola cost 15 cents, while 35 cents
bought a tuna on rye. By the start of his junior year, however,
the ambitious lad had charmed his way into a part-time
job as an assistant clerk
on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
“Now I would witness the drama unfold firsthand, albeit
as a flunky,” he wrote in his memoir. “And I would be able to pay for college
without any help from Mother and Daddy,
taking the financial burden off them and the guilt burden
off me.”
Courtesy Gerald R Ford library.
Gerald Ford as a center on the Michigan football team, 1933
Gerald Ford
President from 1974 to 1977
University of Michigan, Class of 1935
Gerald Ford graduated from high school in 1931,
one of the bleaker years of the Great Depression.
His mother and stepfather, who owned a struggling paint
store, didn’t have the money
to send him to college, but his high school principal
stepped in, inventing a $100 scholarship
to pay Ford’s tuition at the University of Michigan.
The principal also introduced him
to Michigan’s football coach, who found him a spot on the
team and got him a job waiting tables at the university’s hospital in return
for free meals. (Michigan didn’t have football scholarships back then,
according to Ford biographer Lou Cannon.) An aunt and uncle kicked in $2 a week
to give him some spending money.
When the future president joined a fraternity, he had to
wait tables there too,
in order to cover the dues. Ford would later go on to Yale,
working his way through its law school as an assistant football coach.
Standford's surveying squad,
Herbert Hover seated left. 1893
Herbert Hoover
President from 1929 to 1933
Leland Stanford Junior University, Class of 1895
The president most associated with the Great Depression
of the 1930s,
and often awarded the blame for it, Herbert Hoover was
no stranger to poverty himself.
The son of a blacksmith, he was born in Iowa, orphaned at
age 9, and sent to live with an uncle
in Oregon. He left school to work at age 14, but later
entered Leland Stanford Junior University, now better known simply as Stanford
University, as part of its first class.
In fact, Hoover is sometimes referred to as Stanford’s
very first student
because he was apparently the first to be assigned a dorm
room.
Although tuition at Stanford was free in those days
(today it’s $45,729 a year),
Hoover still had to pay for room, board, and expenses. He
did that with an assortment of jobs, including delivering newspapers and
starting his own student laundry service.
Hoover graduated in 1895 with a degree in geology and
became rich as an international mining consultant and mine owner before turning
his attention to public service in 1914.
Lyndon Johnson during his college days. 1928
Lyndon Johnson
President from 1963 to 1969
Southwest Texas State Teachers College, Class of 1930
Lyndon Baines Johnson showed his celebrated flair
for political maneuvering from
the moment he arrived at Southwest Texas State Teachers College
(now Texas
State University) in San Marcos, Tex.
Though jobs were scarce, his politically connected father
had persuaded the college president to give him one—picking up trash, cutting
weeds, and raking rocks on campus for 20 cents
an hour. Johnson himself soon
talked the president into a more prestigious and better paying position,
mopping floors in Old Main at 30 cents an hour. Before long he had prevailed
on
the president to hire him as his personal office boy, at $15 a month.
“Within five weeks of his arrival at the college,” wrote
biographer Robert Caro, “he was working in the president’s office, in a job
which hadn’t even existed before he got there.”
Richard Nixon (#23) with the Whittier College football team, 1934
Richard Nixon
President from 1969 to 1974
Whittier College, Class of 1934
Richard Milhous Nixon may have been the most reviled
president of the 20th century,
not to mention the only president ever forced to resign
under threat of impeachment.
But nobody ever said he was lazy.
Although he’d later say he dreamed of going to an Eastern
college, his family needed him
to help out at home. So he enrolled instead at Whittier
College, a small Quaker-founded institution in his California hometown. A
bequest from his grandfather covered
his $250 a year tuition, and Nixon made up the rest of his
expenses by working
in his family’s grocery store, managing the produce
department.
“Richard got up at 4 a.m., drove to Los Angeles, haggled
over his purchases, drove back
to the store, set up the vegetables, and then began his
[school] day,” biographer
Stephen Ambrose wrote. “Afternoons and weekends he kept
up the books for the store.
He usually studied until past midnight.” Nixon would
later make a point of having worked
his way through college in his famous 1952 “Checkers”
speech, a response to charges
that he was living large, courtesy of wealthy donors.
Ronald Regan in a summer job as a lifeguard. 1927
Ronald Reagan
President from 1981 to 1989
Eureka College, Class of 1932
As an actor, Ronald Wilson Reagan spent his
share of time on Hollywood movie-set campuses, playing everything from a Notre
Dame student in Knute Rockne, All-American to a professor
in films like She’s Working Her Way Through College and
the immortal Bedtime for Bonzo.
But the future president spent his real campus years far
away from the bright lights,
at Eureka College, a small Christian school in
central Illinois. Reagan’s family didn’t have
the money to send him to college, so he attended Eureka
on a partial football scholarship
plus the money he earned doing an assortment of jobs,
including lifeguarding, coaching,
and washing dishes at a women’s dormitory.
He would recall that last one as “the best job I ever
had”—
even after he’d become the most powerful man on the
planet.
http://time.com/money/4116956/us-presidents-worked-paid-college/
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