Lawyer, judge, independent counsel invesigator. Born July 21, 1946, in Vernon, Texas, to W. D. and Vannie Maude (Trimble) Starr. His father was a Church of Christ minister in the town of Thalia and moonlighted as a barber for extra money. He raised Starr to shun smoking and drinking. The family, which included Starr's older sister Billie and his big brother Jerry, moved to San Antonio, Texas when Starr was still in grade school. Starr was an immaculate youngster who as an adolescent polished his and his father's shoes each night. Starr briefly attended Harding College, a Christian campus in Searcy, Arkansas, selling Bibles door-to-door during the summer to raise tuition money. He transferred to George Washington University after a year and a half, where he was an editor at the college newspaper. When most students were letting their hair grow, adopting a casual dress, and protesting the Vietnam War, Starr suited up in a jacket and tie daily and supported American troops in Vietnam, although his psoriasis prevented him from entering military service. Though he disagreed with anti-war activists, he did support their right to demonstrate, as he outlined in the campus paper, and actively campaigned for Lyndon B. Johnson as a member of the Young Democrats. Starr graduated from George Washington in 1968 and got his master's degree from Brown University the following year. He went on to excel in law school at Duke University, obtaining his juris doctorate in 1973. Meanwhile, on August 23, 1970, he married Alice Jean Mendell, who is now a public relations executive. Right out of law school, Starr began clerking for the U.S. Court of Appeals Judge David Dyer in Miami's fifth circuit from 1973 to 1974, then nabbed a coveted position as a clerk for Warren E. Burger, chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, from 1975 to 1977. After that important role, Starr joined the law firm of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher in Washington, D.C., as an associate in 1977 and worked his way up to partner. There he met William French Smith, a friend of Ronald Reagan. Smith was named Reagan's first attorney general in 1981, and asked Starr to be his chief of staff. Though it was a financial step down from his six-figure salary in the private sector, Starr took the position. He figured it could be a stepping stone to the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., where many Supreme Court justices got their start, and he was right. Reagan appointed him to the court in 1983.