GROWING UP HOOSIER

THE HUMORIST GEORGE ADE DESCRIBED A HOOSIER AS "A puzzling combination of shy provincial, unfettered democrat, and Fourth of July orator." Merriam-Webster says simply: "a native or resident of Indiana." On all counts, Mike Pence passed the test resoundingly.

Michael Richard Pence was born June 7, 1959, in Columbus, Indiana, and raised with a cornfield view from his kitchen window. As a bona fide Hoosier, Pence inherited a vast body of folklore explaining his state's often-stereotyped nickname, spanning the decades since Indiana statehood and dating at least back to 1832. In that year, a curious sturgeon left Lake Michigan for the pure waters of St. Joseph River and ran afoul of a fisherman's hook. The fish, weighing in at eighty-three pounds, was pictured on the pages of a South Bend newspaper and dubbed a "real Hoosier" because of his size and lack of pulchritude.

Despite the word's various interpretations, both good and bad, Hoosiers have always embraced the term affectionately, much as one appreciates the convenience of an old sweater or the comfort of a well-worn shoe. It is a legacy that has left its mark on sports, tourism, and especially politics, as Pence and his opponent John Gregg would demonstrate in a spirited governor's race to see who could out-Hoosier the other. Campaigns even today mention Hoosier common sense and values and are apt to display candidates standing beside a grain silo or a field of tall corn. This Hoosier identity would form the cornerstone of Pence's political career and prove helpful along his path from Columbus to the vice presidency.

Pence has spoken frequently of the importance of life's choices. "Dreams can become reality. Your future is the sum total of the moral and educational choices you make," he said. But the most consequential choice was made by his doughty Irish great-grandmother, who in 1923 handed her son a one-way ticket to the United States with a vague promise, "There's a future there for you."

Pence's family followed traditional patterns of early twentieth-century immigration, passing through Ellis Island on the way west in search of work. They eventually put down roots in Columbus.

Grandfather Richard Michael Cawley, born in 1903, grew up in a two-room house just east of a village called Tubbercurry, Ireland, and attended school through the eighth grade. He faced few job prospects in 1920s Ireland, where political upheaval and economic stagnation limited opportunities for the young. At age twenty, he boarded the SS Andania with twenty-three dollars in his pocket and the occupation "miner" listed on the ship manifest. After entering the United States at Ellis Island on April 11, 1923, he headed to Chicago, where he found work as a trolley driver, married an Irish American girl, started a family, and became a US citizen in 1941. The young family, joined by Cawley's mother-in-law, lived in a brick two-flat on Honore Street on Chicago's south side. Richard and Mary Maloney Cawley had two daughters: Mary Ellen, born in 1931, followed by Ann Jane one year later. The younger daughter, who went by the name Nancy, would become the mother of the vice president.

Pence's paternal grandparents also hailed from the working-class neighborhoods of Chicago. Edward Joseph Pence Sr. left high school after his freshman year to work at the stockyards, the number-one supplier of livestock for the world's meatpacking industry. Census records show he was a cattle handler at age seventeen and later a hog salesman. Ed Pence married Geraldine Kathleen Kuhn, the daughter of an Irish mother and Prussian father, both immigrants. The young couple lived in a brick apartment on May Street about five miles from the historic Union Stock Yard Gate and had a daughter and two sons. The eldest was Edward Pence Jr., born in 1929, the father of the future vice president.

It was Ed Pence's dress blue army uniform that caught Nancy Cawley's eye. The two met in a Chicago club, fell in love, and were married on January 7, 1956. Second Lieutenant Ed Pence was a Korean War veteran with the Forty-Fifth Infantry who'd seen combat at the battles of Old Baldy and Pork Chop Hill, earning a Bronze Star in 1953 for meritorious service. "Dad never talked about the war, and that medal stayed in his dresser drawer," Pence said of his father, who died in 1988. Family members who knew Ed from boyhood described him as a happy-go-lucky teenager who became more serious as a result of his military experience. One cousin surmised that Ed experienced survivor guilt, having lost so many comrades in battle. That explanation helped Pence better understand his father's reticence on the subject.

After attending Chicago's Jesuit Loyola University, Ed found work in the oil industry, first in Chicago and then in Indianapolis. Nancy, who had attended secretarial school, stayed home to raise a growing family that would include four boys and two girls. In 1959, an opportunity with Kiel Brothers Oil Company lured them to Columbus in Bartholomew County, a community of 20,778 just forty-five miles south of Indianapolis.

Columbus of the late 1950s was one of the fastest growing areas of Indiana due to the presence of two thriving manufacturers: Arvin Industries, which made automotive parts, and Cummins Engine Company, maker of diesel engines. Both companies dated to the early 1900s, when Indiana played an outsized role in the development of the automobile. Although modern Columbus has earned a reputation for progressive architecture and "enlightened leadership," 1960s Columbus was still agrarian and homogeneous: 98 percent white and 75 percent native Hoosier. It would be another two decades before Columbus would see the diversity that characterized Indiana's more populous cities such as Indianapolis and Fort Wayne.

The Pence family settled into a three-bedroom brick ranch in a north-side neighborhood called Everroad Park West. "I guess you could describe it as modest at the time, although we never thought in those terms," said Ed Pence, the second of the six children. "It was just our home."

Mike Pence was the first to be born in Columbus, joining Ed and Gregory and soon followed by Thomas and sisters Anne and Mary Therese. With loquacious older brothers, Pence didn't start talking until age three, his mother remembered, and his first words — taught to him by Grandfather Cawley — were "you're welcome" in Gaelic. His next Gaelic lesson was the nursery rhyme "Humpty Dumpty."

Their homes continued to mirror the family's growing prosperity. By the time Pence entered middle school, Ed was...