Theodore Garrett was born November 25, 1898 in Overbrook, Kansas. He went into the United States Army in 1917, but was discharged in 1919 and had to go back to farming at home until the Great Depression. He was working at a railroad company when he got wind of Hoover (Boulder) Dam being constructed in Nevada, so he moved there to find a stable job on January 15, 1931. While he was employed at the Union Pacific Railroad Company, Garrett was a truck driver.