The Life of James A. Michener Trivia Quiz

Answer: An adoptive mother

Michener has been quoted to say "I never had a father or a man in the house". He was raised by Mabel Michener, a widow, who adopted him.

Answer: Doylestown, Pennsylvania

Michener spent his childhood in Doylestown. Quoted from the museum's website: "In 1988, with the support of many dedicated citizens, the James A. Michener Art Museum opened as an independent, non-profit cultural institution dedicated to preserving, interpreting and exhibiting the art and cultural heritage of the Bucks County region.

The Museum is named for Doylestown's most famous son, the Pulitzer-Prize winning writer and supporter of the arts who had first dreamed of a regional art museum in the early 1960's."

Answer: Albert

Albert is a name of German origin. It means noble or bright.

Answer: Work as a traveling shoe salesman

To the best of my knowledge and research, Michener never worked as a traveling shoe salesman. As a teenager, he traveled around the country by riding boxcars and hitch hiking, and would do odd jobs like working for carnivals to make a little spending money. Having graduated with highest honors from Swarthmore College and attending St. Andrew's University in Scotland, he taught at various schools including the George School in Bucks County, PA and at Colorado State Teachers College.

He was also an Assistant Visiting Professor of History at Harvard University. Sometime after that, he was editing textbooks for a major NY publishing company, MacMillan Publishing, when he left to join the Navy for World War II.

Answer: True

In 1962, Michener ran for U.S. Congress as a Democrat in a heavily Republican district in Pennsylvania. He lost. However, in 1968, he served as secretary of the Pennsylvania Constitutional Convention and helped to enact several important changes in state government.

Answer: 3

In 1935, he married Patti Koon, whom he met while teaching at the George School in Doylestown, PA. After getting divorced from his first wife, in 1948 he married Vange Nord, an aspiring writer. In 1955, Michener and Nord divorced and he married his third wife, Mari Yoriko Sabusawa. She was a 2nd generation Japanese-American and they were married for 39 years until she died in 1994.

Answer: True

Michener never had any children of his own with any of his wives, but throughout their marriage, he and third wife Mari housed and cared for many children. Plus, as he said in an interview in 1991, "My wife and I send other people's children to college and are glad when they achieve and gain good lives."

Answer: Balzac

Michener said, quoted from an interview given in 1991 in St. Petersburg, Florida (available at http://www.achievement.org/autodoc/page/mic0int-1): "Balzac. That son-of-a-gun could write. And he kept writing. He wrote, there were 30 or 40 great books. And he did it his way.

He didn't try to be Flaubert; he didn't try to be Dostoyevsky, or anybody else. I take great solace from that. It's curious. I'm educated in the British tradition, but the French have had a very powerful impact on me."

Answer: Gerald R. Ford

Michener was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom on January 10, 1977 by President Gerald R. Ford in honor of Michener's generous support of the arts. The Medal of Freedom is one of the two highest awards given to civilians in the United States (the other award being the Congressional Gold Medal).

Answer: Austin, Texas

In his final years, he was based at the University of Texas at Austin, where he was when he died on October 16, 1997 at the age of 90. He died of renal failure a few days after having ordered his doctors to disconnect the kidney dialysis machine that was keeping him alive.