He was born "in the veil",as the story is told. The midwife noticed some movement and cut the sac open and delivered him. He had no eyelashes and only a few fingernails were developed. They put him in a shoebox and kept him on an open oven door to keep him warm.
My Hungarian immigrant grandmother didn't know that he couldn't possibly survive so she did everything she could to keep him alive.
He was undersized until he had a huge growth spurt around age ten, he was about 5"7" as an adult and fought as a middleweight at 158 lbs as an amateur boxer.
During WW2 he worked at a Wright Aero. engine factory slinging unmachined aluminum ingots around for 12 hours a day.
He fathered three of us who are eternally grateful that there was no cockeyed liberal do-gooder around to talk my grandmother out of saving him.Amen
He started life so tiny that the country doctor didn't expect him to live and told grannie to put him in a shoebox and set him next to the stove.
Well it worked!--they fed him with a dropper.
My granny was born in 1878, she weighed 3 pounds. She said they taped her head. She was a midwife in the Teton Valley in the early 1900's She used to tell us of all the tiny miracle babies she delivered, and cared for without modern technology.