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Tragic Details About Melinda Dillon

Melinda Ruth Cardy was born on October 13, 1939, in Hope, Arkansas, even though the Cardy family lived in Alabama. The decision to travel nearly 500 miles from the south to the midwest was a matter of previous tragedy. As Dillon told the New York Daily News (via Newspapers.com) in 1962, "[D]addy knew a doctor there, and mother had lost one baby." Her father, Fred Cardy, worked for an oil company; her mother, Noreen, ran a beauty salon. Melinda's parents divorced when she was just five years old, but Noreen soon remarried a man in the U.S. Army. "Although I was brought up using my stepfather's name, Dillon, my mother kept her word to my real father that I would not be adopted," she told the New York Daily News. "I guess that makes my real name still Cardy."

Having a new stepfather in the Armed Services meant Melinda's youth was spent getting used to one place just in time to move to another. One stint — from 1948 to 1951 — was in Nurnberg, Germany. She grew tired of constantly changing schools, including three different high schools, so, with her family's blessing, she put an end to that pattern by leaving home in her later teens. Per Variety, she graduated high school in Chicago at Hyde Park High School. According to the New York Daily News, she was awarded a scholarship from the Goodman School of Drama at the Art Institute of Chicago (now at DePaul University).

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Noelle Montes

Update: 2024-05-02