He was born in Boston, Massachusetts, February 10, 1930. He attended Kenmore High School, Kenmore, New York from 1943 to 1947, Long Beach City College from 1991 to 1995, where he earned AA degrees in English and Foreign Languages with honors. He graduated cum laude with a B.A. degree in English Language and Composition in 1997, and he received a Graduate Certificate in Teaching English as a Second Language from California State University, Long Beach in 2000. He is English/Spanish bilingual and has studied Spanish at the University of Guadalajara in Mexico and at the Proyecto Linguistico Francisco Marroquin in Guatemala.