Word: nader
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...Nader's feeling for duty and constant study grew out of his family upbringing in Winsted, Conn., a gracious town of 8,000. His mother Rose used to ask friends all about films showing at the local movie house and would send her four children only to the few that had useful messages. Nightly dinner was more a course in forensics than food: it often lasted four or five hours, and everyone was expected to contribute his opinions to the topic of the evening. Nadra Nader, now 77, a Lebanese immigrant who built up a moderately prosperous restaurant business, presided...
...weekends, Nader hitchhiked out of town?just to see the U.S.?and learned, among many other things, that trucks were not built the way he and truck drivers thought they should be. For instance, a coat hanger in some truck cabs could puncture a driver's skull in case of an accident. He graduated magna cum laude and won a Phi Beta Kappa...
Later, at Harvard Law School, Nader was passed over for the staff of the prestigious Law Review, but became editor of the school's issue-oriented newspaper. One of his articles was "American Cars: Designed for Death." After graduation, he pursued his growing interest in highway safety while working as an aide to Daniel Patrick Moynihan, then an Assistant Secretary of Labor, and he later expanded his law-school article into Unsafe at Any Speed. The book, published in 1965, was dedicated to a friend who had been crippled in an auto accident. It is a shocking indictment...
...lanky six-footer who is constantly behind schedule and late for appointments, Nader can be painfully shy among strangers. When asked to give his name in hotels and on planes, he often tries to avoid recognition and replies, "Nader, initial R." He even keeps his birthday secret lest admirers send him cakes or other gifts. His driving intensity about work can sometimes trap him into hasty accusations. When economists in the Johnson Administration once met with auto industry leaders in an effort to win voluntary price restraint, Nader was too quick to accuse the Administration of "acquiescing" to Detroit...
...regulatory agencies are utterly confounded when we come to investigate them," he says. "They have forgotten what citizens look like." On rare evenings out at a party, he usually leaves early to get in a couple more hours of reading, writing or phoning at his office. Though Bachelor Nader has no antipathy to girls, he rarely has the time or inclination for dates. Says his father: "We're very proud of Ralph. But we wish he would get married soon...