Dan was born and lived in Chicago until he left to attend the University of Illinois at Urbana. He then entered the Navy in 1944. After Dan joined the navy, his parents, Jacob and Bella, and his younger sister, Toby, moved to California. Dan was discharged from the Navy in 1945 and he rejoined his family in California. He then, with the benefit of the G. I. Bill, was able to enroll at the University of California at Berkeley where he earned a B.A. degree in Psychology in l949. Dan, like so many other Americans, was helped to get his start from that historic legislation.