Sheilagh Thompson was born on December 10, 1923 to Robert and Leah Thompson. She grew up in Southern California and graduated from San Pedro High School. She earned her BA in 1944, her MA in 1947, and her PhD in 1951 all in anthropology from the University of California, Berkeley. She married Richard Brooks on November 10, 1951, and the couple had two children, Kathleen and Carolyn.
Eugene Edward “Gene” Hertzog was born in Oakpark, Illinois in 1932 and spent his childhood in Upper Derby, Pennsylvania. At the age of seventeen, Hertzog contracted polio and was unable to completed high school. After recovering from the disease, Hertzog obtained his GED and joined the United States Army in 1949. For nine years, he served as a military photographer stationed in Japan and finally in Albuquerque, New Mexico where he met his first wife, Magdalene Tefoya. The couple married in November 1957 and had one son, Wayne Alan.