Robert Strong Woodward was born in the town of Northampton, Massachusetts, on May 11, 1885. His father's work in real estate required the family to relocate often, and he was placed in school after school around the country, from Springfield, Ohio, to Schenectady, NY, and beyond. He entered Bradley Polytechnic Institute in Peoria, Illinois, in the fall of 1902, as a high school junior. Three years later, after finishing high school and a year of college-level study in the liberal arts, he joined his parents in California, where he planned to attend Leland Stanford.

But in September, 1906, at the age of 21, Robert suffered an accidental gunshot injury, which left him permanently paralyzed from the waist down. In 1910, he returned to ...