The Rock
Childhood Of Celebrities : The Rock
Dwayne ” The Rock ” Johnson was born in Hayward, California to African Canadian wrestler Rocky Johnson and Ata Maivia, a Samoan of royal Samoan lineage. His maternal grandfather was High Chief Peter Maivi. Dwayne traveled around a lot with his parents and watched his father perform in the ring. He went to such schools as President William McKinley High School in Hawaii. As he entered 11th grade, Johnson’s father’s job required his relocation to Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, in the state’s rugged Lehigh Valley region. For Johnson, the Lehigh Valley proved a huge cultural shift from he had known and seen in the San Francisco Bay Area in his early youth. But Johnson welcomed the change and assimilated quickly in the new area. In Bethlehem, Johnson began to cultivate an intense athleticism, following in the footsteps of his father and grandfather. He began playing football at Bethlehem’s Freedom High School, a member of what was then known as the East Penn Conference (recently renamed the Lehigh Valley Conference). The conference was one of the highest quality high school football and wrestling conferences in the United States. In football, the conference has produced a considerable amount of high-level Division I collegiate and NFL football talent.
Known for its blue collar ruggedness, the Lehigh Valley proved a hand-in-glove match for Johnson, who fit in well with the area’s street toughness. He had always been rowdy and football allowed him to translate the negative energy he had from fighting and hurting whomever he fought. He had actually been deemed a lethal weapon by police because his fights were always one sided. That toughness carried to his football play, where Johnson began, for the first time, to face high quality players and began to excel amidst the area’s extraordinary athletic competitiveness. He would later credit the high level of athletic competitiveness he encountered in the Lehigh Valley with building the foundation for his life-long passion for winning and embracing challenge. In addition to playing football at Freedom High School, he also was a member of the high school’s track and field team.
Credit : Wikipedia
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