He was the youngest of twelve children born to an immigrant family from Norway. When he was three years old, his father died and his mother died when he was eleven. In 1924, he and two of his brothers moved to Chicago with a patent for a plastic window material he had developed.
Born into a large Norwegian-American family, he was the youngest of twelve children. Tragedy struck early, as his father passed away when he was just three years old, followed by his mother's death when he was eleven. Two years later, in 1924, he and two brothers made the move to Chicago, where they had successfully patented a revolutionary plastic window material.