Editing Ted Stevens (section)

===Childhood and youth===
[[File:Ted Stevens as a child.PNG|alt=Toddler Ted Stevens rides on a tricycle; he has a smile. The image is in sepiatone.|left|thumb|upright|Stevens as a toddler, c. 1925]]
Stevens was born November 18, 1923, in [[Indianapolis]], Indiana, the third of four children,<ref name="rootsweb">[http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~battle/senators/stevens.htm Theodore Fulton "Ted" Stevens genealogy.] {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071024182519/http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~battle/senators/stevens.htm |date=October 24, 2007 }} Rootsweb.com. Retrieved on May 31, 2007.</ref><ref name="whitney-formative">{{cite news|last=Whitney|first=David|date=August 8, 1994|url=https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CREC-1994-08-18/html/CREC-1994-08-18-pt1-PgS26.htm|title=Formative years: Stevens's life wasn't easy growing up in the depression with a divided family|work=Anchorage Daily News|page=A1|access-date=May 15, 2020|via=Congressional Record|archive-date=August 8, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200808010522/https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CREC-1994-08-18/html/CREC-1994-08-18-pt1-PgS26.htm|url-status=live}}</ref> in a small cottage built by his paternal grandfather after the marriage of his parents, Gertrude S. Chancellor and George A. Stevens. The family later lived in Chicago, where George was an accountant before losing his job during the [[Great Depression]].<ref name="whitney-formative"/><ref name="Mitchell 2001">{{cite book|last=Mitchell|first=Donald Craig|year=2001|title=Take My Land, Take My Life: The Story of Congress's Historic Settlement of Alaska Native Land Claims, 1960–1971|location=Fairbanks, AK|publisher=University of Alaska Press}}</ref>{{rp|220}} Around this time, when Ted Stevens was six years old, his parents divorced, and Stevens and his three siblings moved back to Indianapolis so they could reside with their paternal grandparents, followed shortly thereafter by their father, who developed problems with his eyes which eventually blinded him. Stevens's mother moved to California and sent for Stevens's siblings as she could afford to, but Stevens stayed in Indianapolis helping to care for his father and a mentally disabled cousin, Patricia Acker, who also lived with the family. The only adult in the household with a job was Stevens's grandfather. Stevens helped to support the family by working as a [[Newspaper hawker|newsboy]], and would later remember selling many newspapers on March 1, 1932, when newspaper headlines blared the news of the [[Lindbergh kidnapping]].<ref name="whitney-formative"/>

[[File:Ted Stevens Graduation photo (cropped 3x4).png|thumb|upright|left|alt=Ted Stevens in the Redondo High School Class of 1942 Yearbook. He has a dark suit, black hair, a neutral expression, and a striped tie.|Stevens in the Redondo High School Class of 1942 Yearbook]]
In 1934 Stevens's grandfather punctured a lung in a fall down a tall flight of stairs, contracted [[pneumonia]], and died.<ref name="whitney-formative"/> Stevens's father, George, died in 1957 in [[Tulsa]], Oklahoma, of lung cancer.<ref name="Mitchell 2001"/>{{rp|220}} Stevens and his cousin Patricia moved to [[Manhattan Beach, California]] in 1938, by which time both of Stevens's grandparents had died,<ref name="leader" /> to live with Patricia's mother, Gladys Swindells.<ref name="whitney-formative"/> Stevens attended [[Redondo Union High School]], participating in extracurricular activities including working on the school newspaper and becoming a member of a student theater group affiliated with the [[YMCA]], and, during his senior year, the Lettermen's Society. Stevens also worked at jobs before and after school,<ref name="Mitchell 2001"/>{{rp|220}} but still had time for surfing with his friend Russell Green, the son of the Signal Gas and Oil Company's president, who remained a close friend throughout Stevens's life.<ref name="whitney-formative"/><ref name="life"/>