Some context: Benjamin Solomon Carson Sr. (born September 18, 1951) is an American neurosurgeon, author and politician serving as the 17th and current United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development since 2017, under the Trump Administration. Prior to his cabinet position, he was a candidate for President of the United States in the Republican primaries in 2016. Born in Detroit, Michigan, and a graduate of Yale University and the University of Michigan Medical School, Carson has authored numerous books on his medical career and political stances.
Carson was born in Detroit, Michigan, to Robert Solomon Carson, Jr. (1914-1992), a World War II U.S. Army veteran, and his wife, Sonya Carson (nee Copeland; 1928-2017). Robert Carson was a Baptist minister, but later a Cadillac automobile plant laborer. Both of his parents came from large families in rural Georgia, and they were living in rural Tennessee when they met and married. Carson's mother was 13 and his father was 28 when they married, and after his father finished his military service, they moved from Chattanooga, Tennessee to Detroit, where they lived in a large house in the Indian Village neighborhood. Carson's older brother, Curtis, was born in 1949, when his mother was 20. In 1950, Carson's parents purchased a new 733-square foot single-family detached home on Deacon Street in the Boynton neighborhood in southwest Detroit. Carson's Detroit Public Schools education began in 1956 with kindergarten at the Fisher School, and continued through first, second, and the first half of third grade, during which time he was an average student. When Carson was five, his mother learned that his father had a prior family and had not divorced his first wife. In 1959, when Carson was eight, his parents separated and he moved with mother and brother to live for two years with his mother's Seventh-day Adventist older sister and her sister's husband in multi-family dwellings in the Dorchester and Roxbury neighborhoods of Boston. In Boston, Carson's mother attempted suicide, had several psychiatric hospitalizations for depression, and for the first time began working outside the home as a domestic worker, while Carson and his brother attended a two-classroom school at the Berea Seventh-day Adventist church where two teachers taught eight grades, and the vast majority of time was spent singing songs and playing games. In 1961, when Carson was ten, he moved with his mother and brother back to southwest Detroit, where they lived in a multi-family dwelling in a primarily white neighborhood (Springwells Village) across the railroad tracks from the Delray neighborhood, while renting out their house on Deacon Street which his mother received in a divorce settlement. When they returned to Detroit public schools, Carson and his brother's academic performance initially lagged far behind their new classmates, having essentially lost a year of school by attending a Seventh-day Adventist church school in Boston, but both improved when their mother limited their time watching television and required them to read and write book reports on two library books per week. Carson attended the predominantly white Higgins Elementary School for fifth and sixth grades and the predominantly white Wilson Junior High School for seventh and the first half of eighth grade. In 1965, when Carson was 13, he moved with his mother and brother back to their house on Deacon Street. He attended the predominantly black Hunter Junior High School for the second half of eighth grade. When he was eight, Carson had dreamed of becoming a missionary doctor, but five years later he aspired to the lucrative lifestyles of psychiatrists portrayed on television, and his brother bought him a subscription to Psychology Today for his 13th birthday.
Did he have any siblings?
A: Carson's older brother, Curtis, was born in 1949, when his mother was 20.
Some context: Walter Leland Cronkite Jr. (November 4, 1916 - July 17, 2009) was an American broadcast journalist who served as anchorman for the CBS Evening News for 19 years (1962-1981). During the heyday of CBS News in the 1960s and 1970s, he was often cited as "the most trusted man in America" after being so named in an opinion poll. He reported many events from 1937 to 1981, including bombings in World War II; the Nuremberg trials; combat in the Vietnam War; the Dawson's Field hijackings; Watergate; the Iran Hostage Crisis; and the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, civil rights pioneer Martin Luther King Jr., and Beatles musician John Lennon. He was also known for his extensive coverage of the U.S. space program, from Project Mercury to the Moon landings to the Space Shuttle.
He dropped out of college in his junior year, in the fall term of 1935, after starting a series of newspaper reporting jobs covering news and sports. He entered broadcasting as a radio announcer for WKY in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. In 1936, he met his future wife, Mary Elizabeth "Betsy" Maxwell, while working as the sports announcer for KCMO (AM) in Kansas City, Missouri. His broadcast name was "Walter Wilcox". He would explain later that radio stations at the time did not want people to use their real names for fear of taking their listeners with them if they left. In Kansas City, he joined the United Press in 1937. He became one of the top American reporters in World War II, covering battles in North Africa and Europe. With his name now established, he received a job offer from Edward R. Murrow at CBS News to join the Murrow Boys team of war correspondents, relieving Bill Downs as the head of the Moscow bureau. CBS offered Cronkite $125 a week along with "commercial fees" amounting to $25 for almost every time Cronkite reported on air. Up to that point, he had been making $57.50 per week at UP, but he had reservations about broadcasting. He initially accepted the offer. When he informed his boss Harrison Salisbury, UP countered with a raise of $17.50 per week; Hugh Baillie also offered him an extra $20 per week to stay. Cronkite ultimately accepted the UP offer, a move which angered Murrow and drove a wedge between them that would last for years. Cronkite was on board USS Texas (BB-35) starting in Norfolk, Virginia, through her service off the coast of North Africa as part of Operation Torch, and thence back to the US. On the return trip, Cronkite was flown off Texas in one of her OS2U Kingfisher aircraft when Norfolk was within flying distance. He was granted permission to be flown the rest of the distance to Norfolk so that he could outpace a rival correspondent on USS Massachusetts (BB-59) to return to the US and to issue the first uncensored news reports to published about Operation Torch. Cronkite's experiences aboard Texas launched his career as a war correspondent. Subsequently, he was one of eight journalists selected by the United States Army Air Forces to fly bombing raids over Germany in a B-17 Flying Fortress part of group called the Writing 69th, and during a mission fired a machine gun at a German fighter. He also landed in a glider with the 101st Airborne in Operation Market Garden and covered the Battle of the Bulge. After the war, he covered the Nuremberg trials and served as the United Press main reporter in Moscow from 1946 to 1948.
Where else did he work?
A:
In Kansas City, he joined the United Press in 1937. He became one of the top American reporters in World War II, covering battles in North Africa and Europe.