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Chuck Hagel's Early -- But formative -- Days
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These tidbits from David Hendee's wonderful profile of Chuck Hagel in the Omaha World Herald, may never come up in the confirmation hearings, but they should:
Hagel began working when he was seven, delivering papers, and then servied as a carhop (delivering trays on a stool) at a drive-in restaurant. One Christmas Day when Chuck was 16 his father, a WWII tail gunner, was discovered in his bed, dead of a heart attack. When Chuck and his younger brother graduated from high school his mother gave them each a Samsonite suitcase. "Message: Go out and make your way in the world," Hendee writes.

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