Grady Birdsong, the son of an oil field roughneck, driller, tool pusher, and a homemaker mother, was raised on the small town values of “God, Mother, Country, and Apple Pie,” in that order. He grew up in central and southwest Kansas attending Southwestern College in Winfield, Kansas, before enlisting in the Marine Corps in 1966. After two combat tours in Northern I Corps of Vietnam during the Tet Offensive of 1968 and along the DMZ in 1969, he returned to Denver and finished his formal education at Regis University, Denver, Colorado.