The following was compiled and written by Jean Ershler Schatz, artist and researcher from Laguna Woods, California:

Sam Francis was born in San Mateo, California in 1923, the son of a mathematics professor.  In 1941 he began a premedical course at the University of California at Berkeley, but he dropped out in 1943 to join the United States Army Air Corps.  He landed in a United States Army hospital following a spinal injury during flight training.   Flat on his bac (showing 500 of 12831 characters).