While he was born during the height of the Depression in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Tom Cundy grew up in Bellevue, Kentucky, an Irish/German settlement along the Ohio River. He did not have a close relationship with his father, an unskilled laborer and an alcoholic who was away from home for long periods of time. When he was 16, his parents were officially divorced.

Cundy's mother, Nettie Mae Maloney, was a bright straight-A student who never had the opportunity to finish high school. She earned a small income for herself and her son by working in a Cincinnati department store. "I lived with my mother in a very small house, where I slept on a cot that I made up each night," says Cundy. "I never had a real bed until I went away to college."

Besides his mother, Cundy had the love and support of his maternal grandparents. His grandfather, a factory worker, loved to read and spent many hours talking with his young grandson.

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