Word: newt
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...married Kit when Newt was three and adopted him as his son. He spent the next 16 years trying to tame him; Newt spent those years trying to get his father's attention. Bob was a Democrat; Newt, from childhood, a Republican. Bob was a disciplinarian; Newt, a rebel. Once when Bob was stationed in Orleans, France, he was awakened at 5 a.m. by some MPs, who had caught young Newt hitchhiking. Newt's first love, a girl named Jeannette, had just broken up with him, and he wanted to go plead with her to take him back. Furious, Gingrich...
That revelation might have inspired him to follow in Bob's military footsteps, but Newt had flat feet and bad eyesight (nowadays he wears contact lenses). He would probably never have made it into the service, and by the time of Vietnam he was a full-time graduate student and the father of two. Besides, he had already set his heart on politics, a path requiring less self-control, a quality he lacked, but great self-confidence, which he had in abundance...
That path too was scouted during that famous field trip. After visiting the battlefield, Newt and his father went downtown, where he saw bomb damage that he assumed was from World War II. He was appalled to learn that it was from 1916, which was 42 years before. "Three times my lifetime ago, people had damaged that town," he marveled, "and they still hadn't found the energy or the resources...
When Bob Gingrich rotated back to Fort Benning, Georgia, Newt attended Baker High School in nearby Columbus. He quickly earned a reputation as brainy and eccentric. At Baker High, he emceed the school talent show, rattling off a string of corny jokes. The kids started booing. But he stayed cocky. If they didn't like a joke, throw money, he told the audience. He walked off the stage with $19. Newt was voted "Most Intellectual" in his senior class. In the high school yearbook, the quote under his picture read "Specialization may produce success, but greatness is acquired only through...
...crushing break with his father came when he was a sophomore at Emory. Gingrich announced to his stunned family that he wanted to get married--to his high school math teacher, Jacqueline Battley. The unconventional relationship had stayed very quiet, but Newt's sisters knew this was no ordinary schoolboy crush. "Jackie was someone he could talk with, who could see his visions," says Newt's sister Roberta. But Bob was adamantly opposed to a wedding. Bob had never become a doctor because he had to work long hours as a bartender to support his family while going to college...