7 Famous Greats Who Were Adopted [Adoption Month]
By Halogen TV | November 3, 2011 at 10:22 am
Photo by AP
If you believe that the celebrity of the following seven adopted greats seemed destined, then you have to believe that everyone is destined for something. But it begins with the path you take.
1. Steve Jobs
Steve Jobs was born to a Syrian political science professor and a speech therapist, but it was his adoptive parents – an accountant and machinist – who laid the foundation for the Apple creator’s legacy. Jobs began toying with his adoptive father in their garage dismantling and reconstructing electronics at a young age.
2. Edgar Allen Poe
Critics have long speculated that the dark and ominous themes present in Edgar Allen Poe’s stories derive from the loss of both parents – traveling actors by trade – by the age of three. Wealthy tobacco merchant Joe Allen took in and raised the aspiring writer to follow in his footsteps.
3. Babe Ruth
Legendary baseball player Babe Ruth was placed in St. Mary’s Industrial School for Boys orphanage when his tavern-owning parents could not make financial ends meet. Ruth and his sister were the only siblings to survive the familial hardships, six others died due to poverty and disease. It was at St. Mary’s that Ruth was introduced to a game called baseball and the rest is history.
4. Dr. Ruth
Psychosexual therapist Dr. Ruth Westheimer was sent by her parents to a Swiss orphanage in 1938 at the age of 10 to escape the Holocaust. Aside from teaching the world to talk frankly about sex, Westheimer went on to fight with the Jewish Freedom Fighters in Israel, teach in Paris and work for Planned Parenthood, an experience that laid the foundation for exposing the world to the complete nature of human sexuality.
5. Nelson Mandela
Nelson Mandela helped to perpetuate the peaceful termination of the racially charged apartheid regime in South Africa. The South African leader was born into the Thembu sub-tribe nobility of the Xhosa people in South Africa, and informally adopted by the Thembu chief Jongintaba after the death of Mandela’s father at nine years of age.
6. John Lennon
Legendary singer/songwriter John Lennon was adopted by his Aunt Mimi and Uncle George at age five after his parents separated. Lennon fell into a well of troublesome behavior after George died suddenly when he was 12, but eventually met Paul McCartney and began imagining a world where there wasn’t any trouble.
7. Aristotle
Philosophical guru Aristotle’s path toward greatness was often a solitary one. Long before becoming a tutor to Alexander the Great and establishing the Lyceum Academy in Athens, Aristotle was an orphan. With the help of Proxenus, Aristotle’s guardian, the young philosopher was able to attend Plato’s Academy and ultimately make history.
-Li St. Michael
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