William (Henry William) Reusswig was born July 22, 1902 in Somerville, New Jersey. His family name is pronounced "rice-wig." His father was Heinrich Wilhelm Reusswig and his mother was Edith (Norton) Reusswig. He and his older brother Norton were the only children. In July of 1908, at the age of six, his father died. His mother, who came from a prominent political family in Utica, New York, moved back home to raise the children. In 1915 his mother married his step-father, Norman J. Griffith, the manager of Stittville Cannery Company. They lived at 8 Greenwood Court, where his younger sister Aurelia, was born in 1917.

After finishing prep school at the Utica Free Academy in 1920, William Reusswig attended Amherst College, where he joi...