an immunologist and medical school dean at Yale University, Saint Louis University, and finally at the Medical University of South Carolina, where, from 1969, he served as the school's first vice president of academic affairs. Stephen's mother, Lorna Elizabeth Colbert (née Tuck), was a homemaker. In interviews, Colbert has described his parents as devout people who also strongly valued intellectualism, and taught their children it was possible to question the church, and still be Catholic. In an interview, Lorna has described Stephen as rambunctious. As a child, he observed that Southerners were often depicted as being less intelligent than other characters on scripted television; to avoid that stereotype, he taught himself to imitate the speech of American news anchors. While Colbert sometimes comedically claims his surname is French, he is of 15/16ths Irish ancestry; one of his paternal great-great-grandmothers was of German and English descent. Many of his ancestors emigrated from Ireland to North America in the 19th century before and during the Great Famine. Originally, his surname was pronounced in English; Stephen Colbert's father, James, wanted to pronounce the name , but maintained the pronunciation out of respect for his own father. He offered his children the option to pronounce the name whichever way they preferred. Stephen started using later in life when he transferred to Northwestern University, taking advantage of the opportunity to reinvent himself in a new place where no one knew him. Stephen's brother Edward, an intellectual property attorney, retained ; this was shown in a February 12, 2009, appearance on The Colbert Report, when his second oldest brother asked him, " or ?" Ed responded "", to which Stephen jokingly replied, "See you in Hell". On September 11, 1974, when Colbert was ten years old, his father and his two brothers nearest in age, Peter and Paul, died in the crash of Eastern Air Lines Flight 212 while it was attempting to land in Charlotte, North Carolina. They were en route to enroll the two boys at Canterbury School in New Milford, Connecticut. He has discussed the impact on him and his philosophy of grief and suffering. Lorna Colbert relocated the family from James Island to the George Chisolm House, in downtown Charleston and ran the carriage house as a bed and breakfast. Colbert found the transition difficult and did not easily make friends in his new neighborhood. Colbert later described himself during this time