The young Gore Vidal read widely from this collection, feeding a love of history, politics, and the joys of language and narrative.Īfter her divorce from Eugene Vidal, Nina Gore married financier Hugh D. Senator Gore had been blinded in a childhood accident and prevailed upon his wife and grandson to read to him from his large library. He won re-election to his final term in 1930. He was one of the State’s first two Senators, serving from 1907 to 1921. A Mississippian by birth, Senator Gore had traveled west as a young man and helped found the State of Oklahoma. Gore Vidal’s mother, Nina, was the daughter of Senator Thomas Pryor Gore. He would also serve as Director of Air Commerce in the administration of Franklin Roosevelt. After leaving the Army, Vidal senior became one of the pioneers of commercial aviation in the United States, involved in the founding of TWA, Eastern and Northeastern Airlines. As a cadet, the elder Vidal had been a star of the Army football team he later competed in the decathlon at the 1920 Olympic Games in Antwerp, Belgium. At the time of his birth, his father, Eugene Luther Vidal, an officer in the United States Army, was serving as an aeronautics instructor at the United States Military Academy. In his teens, he shortened his name to its more familiar form, Gore Vidal. (Credit: Time Life Pictures/Getty Images)Įugene Luther Gore Vidal was born at West Point, New York. J1933: TIME magazine cover featuring Gore Vidal’s father, Eugene Vidal, Director of Air Commerce in the Roosevelt administration.
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