Editing Dean Rusk (section)

==Childhood and education==
David Dean Rusk was born in rural Cherokee County, [[Georgia (U. S. State)|Georgia]]. The Rusk ancestors had emigrated from [[Northern Ireland]] around 1795. His father Robert Hugh Rusk (1868–1944) had attended Davidson College and Louisville Theological Seminary. He left the ministry to become a cotton farmer and schoolteacher. Rusk's mother Elizabeth Frances Clotfelter was of Swiss extraction. She had graduated from public school, and was a schoolteacher. When Rusk was four years old, the family moved to Atlanta, where his father worked for the U.S. Post Office.<ref>Thomas J. Schoenbaum, ''Waging Peace and War: Dean Rusk in the Truman, Kennedy, and Johnson Years'' (1988) pp. 30–32.</ref> Rusk came to embrace the stern Calvinist work ethic and morality.<ref name="Rusks on Rusk63">{{cite journal |last1=Herring |first1=George |title=Rusks on Rusk: A Georgian's Life as Collaborative Autobiography |journal=The Georgia Historical Quarterly |date=Spring 1992 |volume=76 |issue=1 |page=63 }}</ref>
 
Like most white Southerners, his family was Democratic; young Rusk's hero was President [[Woodrow Wilson]], the first Southern president since the Civil War era.<ref name="Rusks on Rusk64">{{cite journal |last1=Herring |first1=George |title=Rusks on Rusk: A Georgian's Life as Collaborative Autobiography |journal=The Georgia Historical Quarterly |date=Spring 1992 |volume=76 |issue=1 |page=64 }}</ref> The experience of poverty made him sympathetic to Black Americans.  As a 9-year-old, Rusk attended a rally in Atlanta where President Wilson called on the United States to join the [[League of Nations]].<ref name="Rusks on Rusk64" /> Rusk grew up on the mythology and legends of the [[Lost Cause of the Confederacy|"Lost Cause"]] so common to the South, and he came to embrace the militarism of Southern culture as he wrote in a high-school essay that "young men should prepare themselves for service in case our country ever got into trouble."<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Herring |first1=George |title=Rusks on Rusk: A Georgian's Life as Collaborative Autobiography |journal=The Georgia Historical Quarterly |date=Spring 1992 |volume=76 |issue=1 |pages=63–64}}</ref> At the age of 12, Rusk had joined the ROTC, whose training duties he took very seriously.<ref name="Zeiler 5">Zeiler, Thomas ''Dean Rusk'', Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000 p.5</ref> Rusk had an intense reverence for the military and throughout his later career, he was inclined to accept the advice of generals.<ref name="Zeiler 5"/>

He was educated in [[Atlanta Public Schools|Atlanta's public schools]], and graduated from [[Boys High School (Atlanta)|Boys High School]] in 1925,<ref name=Davidson_bio/> spending two years working for an Atlanta lawyer before working his way through Davidson College, a Presbyterian school in North Carolina. He was active in the national military honor society [[Scabbard and Blade]], becoming a cadet lieutenant colonel commanding the [[Reserve Officers' Training Corps]] battalion. He graduated [[Phi Beta Kappa]] in 1931.<ref name=Davidson_bio>{{cite web |url=http://www3.davidson.edu/cms/x10615.xml |title=Biography of Dean Rusk |access-date=2008-02-03  |publisher=[[Davidson College]] |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070130045741/http://www3.davidson.edu/cms/x10615.xml |archive-date=2007-01-30 |url-status=dead }}</ref> While at Davidson, Rusk applied the Calvinist work ethic to his studies. He won a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford University. He studied international relations, taking an MA in PPE (Politics, Philosophy and Economics).<ref>{{cite book |last1=Sillery |first1=A. |last2=Sillery |first2=V. |title=St. John's College Biographical Register 1919-1975 |volume=3 |publisher=Oxford: St. John’s College |year=1975 |page=42}}</ref> He immersed himself in English history, politics, and popular culture, making lifelong friends among the British elite.<ref>Schoenbaum, pp 41–55.</ref> Rusk's rise from poverty made him a passionate believer in the "[[American Dream]]", and a recurring theme throughout his life was his oft-expressed patriotism, a place in which he believed that anyone, no matter how modest their circumstances, could rise up to live the "American Dream".<ref name="Rusks on Rusk63" />

Rusk married Virginia Foisie (October 5, 1915 – February 24, 1996) on June 9, 1937.<ref name=Davidson_bio/> They had three children: [[David Rusk|David]], [[Richard Rusk|Richard]], and Peggy Rusk.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.libs.uga.edu/russell/collections/ruskparks/index.shtml |title=Parks Rusk Collection of Dean Rusk Papers |access-date=2008-02-04 |work=Richard B. Russell Library for Political Research and Studies |publisher=[[University of Georgia]] |pages=Biographical Note |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080517032642/http://www.libs.uga.edu/russell/collections/ruskparks/index.shtml |archive-date=May 17, 2008 }}</ref>

Rusk taught at [[Mills College]] in Oakland, California, from 1934 to 1949 (except during his military service), and he earned an [[LL.B.]] degree at the [[University of California, Berkeley School of Law]] in 1940.<ref name="Langguth, A.J. p.60">Langguth, A.J. ''Our Vietnam 1954–1975'', New York: Simon and Schuster, 2000 p.60</ref>