Accuracy Project

Full or original name at birth: Herbert Norman Schwarzkopf, Jr.*

Date, time and place of birth: August 22, 1934, at 4:45 a.m., Trenton, New Jersey, U.S.A.**

Date, place and cause of death: (Alive as of 2012)

Marriage
Wife: Brenda Pauline Holsinger (m. July 6, 1968)
Wedding took place at the West Point chapel, United States Military Academy, West Point, New York, U.S.A.

Children
Son: Christian Schwarzkopf (b. June 20, 1977)
Daughters: Cynthia Pauline Schwarzkopf (b. August 23, 1970)
Jessica Alice Schwarzkopf (b. March 12, 1972)

Family/Relatives
Siblings: Ruth Ann Schwarzkopf (b. 1930)
Sally Schwarzkopf (b. February 4, 1932) (sisters)

Parents
Father: Herbert Norman Schwarzkopf, Sr. (b. August 28, 1895, Newark, New Jersey - d. November 25, 1958, of pneumonia and lung cancer) (a law enforcement official)
Mother: Ruth Bowman Schwarzkopf (b. 1900, Bluefield, West Virginia - d. October 1976, Walter Reed Medical Center, Washington, D.C., of a heart attack***) (a nurse)

* It has long been reported that Schwarzkopf was born "H. Norman Schwarzkopf" because his father detested his first name. While it certainly is true that his father disliked his given name Herbert, he still named his son Herbert Norman Schwarzkopf, Jr., as his birth certificate originally revealed. In January of 1952, his birth certificate was officially changed to show his name "H. Norman Schwarzkopf" excising both Herbert and Jr. from his name.

Also note that a number of sources offer misspellings for General Schwarzkopf's last name. "Schwartzkopf" and "Shwarzkopf" are a couple of the more common errors.

** Some sources erroneously report "Lawrenceville, New Jersey" as Schwarzkopf's place of birth. His family didn't move to their home at 2549 Main Street in Lawrenceville, until after Norman's 1934 birth.

*** General H. Norman Schwarzkopf's mother did not die in 1975, nor 1977, as some sources assert.

"It doesn't take a hero to order men into battle. It takes a hero to be one of those men who goes into battle."

On computers: "I left California that summer of 1964 having completed my degree plus an additional semester of coursework in computers--they fascinated me because they were the wave of the future."

On his musical preferences: "There was a place a few blocks from where I lived where the regular piano player was Bobby Troup, who was married to the singer Julie London and gave great renditions of the blues. My tastes in popular music ranged from there all the way to Elvis Presley, but I loved folk music best. I may have been the only captain in the United States Army who listened avidly to The Weavers, and Peter, Paul and Mary. I owned every record Joan Baez made and was a great Bob Dylan fan."

Desert Shield/Storm: "The U.S. military in Vietnam had been accused of regularly sugarcoating the truth in an effort to please the President, and on the basis of bad information the President had made some disastrous decisions. We were not going to repeat that mistake. Every shred of information we gave the President would be the most accurate we had, even if it reflected unfavorably."

Bush and Desert Storm: "I'm very thankful for the fact that the President of the United States [George H. W. Bush] has allowed the United States military and the coalition military to fight this war exactly as it should have been fought. The President, in every case, has taken our guidance and our recommendations to heart, and has acted superbly as the Commander in Chief of the United States."

Persian Gulf War victory: "Then I sat back to watch the victory unfold. In the press reports flowing in, the President was now a hero, Cheney was a hero, and Powell was a hero, while the politicians and military experts who had warned that dire things would happen if we went to war were eating their words. Everybody at headquarters felt very proud. I was happy as hell."

Retirement: "I feel that retired general officers should never miss an opportunity to remain silent concerning matters for which they are no longer responsible."

Old age: "I've got all the problems that old men have."

America, and the future: "Because we have emerged as the only remaining superpower, we have an awesome responsibility both to ourselves as a nation and to the rest of the world. I don't know what that responsibility will mean to the future of our great country, but I shall always remain confident of the American people's ability to rise to any challenge."

The most in-depth of more than four dozen sources consulted in preparing this profile:
In the Eye of the Storm: The Life of General H. Norman Schwarzkopf, by Roger Cohen and Claudio Gatti (1991)
Stormin' Norman: An American Hero by Jack Anderson and Dale Van Atta (1991)
It Doesn't Take a Hero, by General H. Norman Schwarzkopf, written with Peter Petre (1992)

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