Robert Hirsch was born in Pusan, Korea in 1948. As the Korean War was ending in 1953, his mother sent him at age five to the United States to live with his biological father due to Korea's harsh wartime conditions of starvation, disease and destruction. & ; & ; He spent the next thirteen years as a military dependent, traveling all over America and spending three years in France where he attended school at a French lycee. He graduated from Cameron University in Lawton Oklahoma and entered the teaching profession as a French and Social Studies instructor. & ; & ; He retired after forty years in June of 2012, having served during his career as a teacher, bus driver, assistant principal, Dean of Discipline, principal and superintendent. He resides with his wife, Melissa Ann Hirsch, in Ocean Springs, Mississippi along the Gulf Coast which they have claimed as their home since 1980.