 Stern was born December 7, 1923, in Norfolk, Virginia, the second of seven children of Milford Josiah Stern, a real estate and life insurance agent, and Thelma Georgia Bendler Stern, who served as a yeomanette during World War I.Prior to the Great Depression, the Stern family enjoyed a prosperous upper-middle-class lifestyle, frequently traveling between their homes in New York and Norfolk.During the Depression, a series of events dominated by the failure of Mr. Stern’s stock market investments resulted in the family’s poverty.