Editing George McGovern (section)

==Early years and education==
McGovern was born in the 600‑person farming community of [[Avon, South Dakota]].<ref name="cby-265">''Current Year Biography 1967'', p. 265.</ref><ref name="nyt-mitn-66"/> His father, the Rev. Joseph C. McGovern, born in 1868, was pastor of the local [[Wesleyan Methodist Church (United States)|Wesleyan Methodist Church]] there.<ref name="nyt-mitn-66"/><ref name="nyt-mitn-61">{{cite news | url=https://select.nytimes.com/mem/archive/pdf?res=FA0E15FD3E5D1B728DDDA80B94DB405B818AF1D3 | title=Man in the News: George Stanley McGovern: Friend of Farmers | newspaper=[[The New York Times]] | date=March 31, 1961 | page=8}}</ref> Joseph, the son of an alcoholic who had immigrated from Ireland,<ref name="ambrose-29"/> had grown up in several states, working in coal mines from the age of nine and parentless from the age of thirteen.<ref name="anson-15"/> He had been a professional baseball player in the [[minor league baseball|minor leagues]],{{refn|Joseph McGovern was a [[second baseman]] for a team in [[Des Moines, Iowa]], but gave it up in 1891 or 1892.<ref name="anson-15">Anson, ''McGovern'', pp. 15–16.</ref><ref>Knock, ''The Rise of a Prairie Statesman'', p. 3.</ref>|group="nb"}} but had given it up due to his teammates' heavy drinking, gambling, and womanizing, and entered the seminary instead.<ref name="ambrose-29">Ambrose, ''The Wild Blue'', pp. 27, 29.</ref> George's mother was the former Frances McLean, born {{circa|1890}} and initially raised in [[Ontario]], [[Canada]]; her family had later moved to [[Calgary]], [[Alberta]], and then she came to South Dakota looking for work as a secretary.<ref name="ambrose-29"/><ref name="cbc-sun-ed"/><ref name="nyt-mitn-72">{{cite news | url=https://select.nytimes.com/mem/archive/pdf?res=F20E14F93C5A137A93C1A8178CD85F468785F9 | title=Man in the News: George Stanley McGovern: Mild-Spoken Nominee With a Strong Will to Fight | newspaper=The New York Times | date=July 13, 1972 | page=24 | author=Lydon, Christopher | author-link=Christopher Lydon}}</ref> George was the second oldest of four children.<ref name="ambrose-29"/> Joseph McGovern's salary never reached $100 per month, and he often received compensation in the form of potatoes, cabbages, or other food items.<ref name="nyt-mitn-66"/><ref name="ambrose-30">Ambrose, ''The Wild Blue'', p. 30.</ref> Joseph and Frances McGovern were both firm [[Republican Party (United States)|Republicans]], but were not politically active or doctrinaire.<ref>Miroff, ''The Liberals' Moment'', p. 28.</ref><ref name="anson-27"/>

[[File:Mitchell corn palace.jpg|thumb|left|The [[Corn Palace]], a longtime sight of McGovern's hometown of [[Mitchell, South Dakota|Mitchell]], South Dakota]]
[[File:Dust Bowl - Dallas, South Dakota 1936.jpg|thumb|left|Effects of a 1936 [[Black Sunday (storm)|Dust Bowl storm]] in nearby Gregory County, South Dakota]]
When George was about three years old, the family moved to Calgary for a while to be near Frances's ailing mother, and he formed memories of events such as the [[Calgary Stampede]].<ref name="cbc-sun-ed">{{cite news|url=http://www.cbc.ca/thesundayedition/ |title=George McGovern interview |last=Sylvestor |first=Kevin |work=[[The Sunday Edition (CBC Radio)|The Sunday Edition]] |publisher=[[CBC Radio One]] |date=July 26, 2009 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210615015554/http://dailysplice.com/directory/CBC-Radio-The-Sunday-Edition-podcast/episode-433682 |archive-date=June 15, 2021 |url-status=dead  }}</ref><ref>Anson, ''McGovern'', p. 17.</ref> When George was six, the family returned to the United States and moved to [[Mitchell, South Dakota]], a community of 12,000.<ref name="nyt-mitn-66"/> McGovern attended public schools there<ref name="cby-265"/> and was an average student.<ref name="ambrose-30"/> He was painfully shy as a child and was afraid to speak in class during first grade.<ref name="airjourn"/> His only reproachable behavior was going to see movies, which were among the worldly amusements forbidden to good Wesleyan Methodists.<ref name="ambrose-30"/> Otherwise he had a normal childhood marked by visits to the renowned Mitchell [[Corn Palace]]<ref name="airjourn"/> and what he later termed "a sense of belonging to a particular place and knowing your part in it".<ref name="nyt-mitn-72"/> He would long remember the [[Dust Bowl]] storms and [[Locust|grasshopper plagues]] that swept the [[Great Plains|prairie states]] during the [[Great Depression]].<ref>McGovern, ''The Third Freedom'', pp. 19–20.</ref> The McGovern family lived on the edge of the [[poverty line]] for much of the 1920s and 1930s.<ref>Anson, ''McGovern'', pp. 24–25.</ref> Growing up so close to privation gave young George a lifelong sympathy for underpaid workers and struggling farmers.<ref name="nyt-mitn-66">{{cite news |url= http://select.nytimes.com/mem/archive/pdf?res=FB0714FA3855107A93C2AA178CD85F428685F9 |title= Man in the News: George Stanley McGovern: Senatorial Price Critic |newspaper=The New York Times |date=July 30, 1966 |page=10}}</ref> He was influenced by the currents of [[populism]] and agrarian unrest, as well as the "practical divinity" teachings of cleric [[John Wesley]] that sought to fight poverty, injustice, and ignorance.<ref name="mann-292">Mann, ''A Grand Delusion'', pp. 292–293.</ref>

McGovern attended [[Mitchell High School (South Dakota)|Mitchell High School]],<ref name="cby-265"/> where he was a solid but unspectacular member of the track team.<ref name="ambrose-31"/> A turning point came when his tenth-grade English teacher recommended him to the debate team, where he became quite active.<ref name="airjourn"/> His high-school debate coach, a history teacher who capitalized on McGovern's interest in that subject, proved to be a great influence in his life, and McGovern spent many hours honing his meticulous, if colorless, forensic style.<ref name="anson-27">Anson, ''McGovern'', pp. 27–31.</ref><ref>Knock, "Come Home America", p. 86.</ref> McGovern and his debating partner won events in his area and gained renown in a state where debating was passionately followed by the general public.<ref name="anson-27"/><ref>E. McGovern, ''Uphill'', p. 52.</ref> Debate changed McGovern's life, giving him a chance to explore ideas to their logical end, broadening his perspective, and instilling a sense of personal and social confidence.<ref name="nyt-mitn-72"/><ref name="anson-27"/> He graduated in 1940 in the top ten percent of his class.<ref name="cby-265"/><ref name="anson-33"/>

McGovern enrolled at small [[Dakota Wesleyan University]] in Mitchell<ref name="cby-265"/> and became a star student there.<ref name="ambrose-46">Ambrose, ''The Wild Blue'', p. 46.</ref> He supplemented a forensic scholarship by working a variety of odd jobs.<ref name="anson-33">Anson, ''McGovern'', pp. 32–33.</ref> With World War II under way overseas and feeling insecure about his own courage,{{refn|In the seventh grade, a gym teacher had called McGovern a "physical coward" for being afraid to dive headfirst and somersault over a gymnastics [[vaulting horse]]; the incident had troubled McGovern psychologically and part of his motivation in taking up flying was to prove himself.<ref name="ambrose-31">Ambrose, ''The Wild Blue'', pp. 31–32.</ref>|group="nb"}} McGovern took flying lessons in an [[Aeronca Aircraft|Aeronca aircraft]] and received a pilot's license through the government's [[Civilian Pilot Training Program]].<ref name="airjourn"/><ref name="ambrose-31"/> McGovern recalled: "Frankly, I was scared to death on that first solo flight. But when I walked away from it, I had an enormous feeling of satisfaction that I had taken the thing off the ground and landed it without tearing the wings off."<ref name="airjourn">{{cite news|url=http://www.airportjournals.com/Display.cfm?varID=0605004 |work=[[Airport Journals]] |title=The Outspoken American: Aviator, Senator and Humanitarian George McGovern |author=Moore, S. Clayton |date=May 2006 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070927174718/http://www.airportjournals.com/Display.cfm?varID=0605004 |archive-date=September 27, 2007 }}</ref> In late 1940 or early 1941, McGovern had pre-marital sex with an acquaintance that resulted in her giving birth to a daughter during 1941, although this did not become public knowledge during his lifetime.{{refn|The woman in question moved to Indiana to have the child in secret during 1941.  The so-named "Fort Wayne" story circulated as a rumor in political and press circles for years.<ref name="wapo-confess"/> An FBI background check conducted after McGovern was appointed to the Food for Peace director position within the Kennedy administration included it, and Nixon's 1972 campaign had access to the information but chose not to use it.<ref name="al-fbi"/> The existence of the child became known to those around liberal circles such as Ted Van Dyk, and McGovern first informed his wife of the story late in the 1972 campaign, when it was thought that the ''[[St. Louis Globe Democrat]]'' might run a story on it (they did not).<ref name="usam-secret">{{cite news | url=https://www.historynewsnetwork.org/article/nixon-could-keep-a-secret | title=Nixon Could Keep A Secret | first=Diana | last=Klebanow | magazine=[[USA Today (magazine)|USA Today]] | date=May 2016 }}</ref> Hints of the story did become public in 1973, when former White House chief of staff [[H. R. Haldeman]] alluded to it during the [[Senate Watergate Committee]] hearings;<ref>Glasser, ''The Eighteen-Day Running Mate'', pp. 172, 342n.</ref> [[Bob Woodward]] and [[Carl Bernstein]] wrote about it for the ''[[Washington Post]]'', including confirmation from a birth certificate, but McGovern issued a denial at that time and the story quickly faded.<ref name="usam-secret"/> McGovern eventually told the truth of the episode to his future biographer, Thomas J. Knock, expressing considerable remorse over his involvement.<ref name="wapo-confess">{{cite news | url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/07/30/in-confession-to-historian-george-mcgovern-revealed-he-had-a-secret-child/ | title=In confession to historian, George McGovern revealed he had a secret child | first=Justin Wm. | last=Moyer | newspaper=[[The Washington Post]] | date=July 30, 2015}}</ref> The story became fully public in 2015, three years after McGovern's death, following release of McGovern's FBI files.<ref name="al-fbi"/> <p> The tale of the European secret child is according to [[Donald C. Simmons Jr.]], a close friend, associate, and co-author of McGovern's in his final years.<ref name="an-second"/> This had not been known in political circles, and  first appeared in a story in the ''[[Black Hills Pioneer]]'' in 2015, soon after the story about the first secret child become public.<ref name="usam-secret"/>  Per Simmons, the European child did not survive into adulthood and McGovern had a haunted feeling at seeing the grave.<ref name="an-second">{{cite news | url=https://eu.aberdeennews.com/story/news/local/2015/07/28/column-mcgoverns-secret-children-weighed-on-his-mind/45420713/ | title=McGovern's secret children weighed on his mind | first=Tom | last=Lawrence | newspaper=[[Aberdeen News]] | date=July 28, 2015}}</ref> It is not clear if there is any corroborating evidence regarding this second secret child.|group="nb"|name="ex03"}} In April 1941 McGovern began dating fellow student [[Eleanor McGovern|Eleanor Stegeberg]], who had grown up in [[Woonsocket, South Dakota]].<ref name="ambrose-45">Ambrose, ''The Wild Blue'', p. 45.</ref><ref>E. McGovern, ''Uphill'', pp. 57–58.</ref> They had first encountered each other during a high school debate in which Eleanor and her twin sister Ila defeated McGovern and his partner.<ref name="nyt-mitn-72"/>

McGovern was listening to a radio broadcast of the [[New York Philharmonic Orchestra]] for a sophomore-year music appreciation class when he heard the news of the December 7, 1941, [[attack on Pearl Harbor]].<ref name="ambrose-42">Ambrose, ''The Wild Blue'', pp. 42–43.</ref> In January 1942 he drove with nine other students to [[Omaha, Nebraska]], and volunteered to join the [[United States Army Air Forces]].<ref>Knock, ''The Rise of a Prairie Statesman'', p. 40.</ref> The military accepted him, but they did not yet have enough airfields, aircraft, or instructors to start training all the volunteers, so McGovern stayed at Dakota Wesleyan.<ref name="ambrose-45"/> George and Eleanor became engaged, but initially decided not to marry until the war was over.<ref name="ambrose-45"/> During his sophomore year, McGovern won the statewide intercollegiate South Dakota Peace Oratory Contest with a speech called "My Brother's Keeper", which was later selected by the [[National Council of Churches]] as one of the nation's twelve best orations of 1942.<ref name="nyt-mitn-61"/><ref>Anson, ''McGovern'', pp. 34–35.</ref> Smart, handsome, and well liked, McGovern was elected president of his sophomore class and voted "Glamour Boy" during his junior year.<ref name="knock-cha-87"/> In February 1943, during his junior year, he and a partner won a regional debate tournament at [[North Dakota State University]] that featured competitors from thirty-two schools across a dozen states; upon his return to campus, he discovered that the Army had finally called him up.<ref name="ambrose-46"/><ref name="knock-cha-87">Knock, "Come Home America", p. 87.</ref>