I was the second son of a sweet man with only a Third Grade Catholic School education. My father in turn was the ninth child of an Irish immigrant who got to this country by running away from his Irish family of 13 children because he didn't like being bossed around -- no money and no friends didn't even slow him down in his 14-year-old's quest to run away by an ocean and half a continent to get to St. Louis. He decided that it was far enough.
I am a Tax Nerd. I now have six college degrees, two of which are law degrees from the now 16th ranked Law School in the Country, Washington University (which is in St. Louis), and an MBA and an accounting degree from University of Missouri (which campus is in St. Louis). I read my first tax book/law book at the age of twelve. It was the 1,100 page, most intellectual, Fifth Edition of Erwin Griswold's [the Dean of the Harvard Law School] Federal Taxation.