Grandson of Brigadier General
Billy Mitchell, regarded as the father of the United States Air Force, and a great-grandson of John L. Mitchell, a Civil War veteran and Democratic politician, who served as a U.S. Senator from Wisconsin from 1893 to 1899, and of Lawrence Tyson, a general, politician, and textile manufacturer who was a Democratic U.S. Senator from Tennessee, from 1925 to 1929. His great-great-grandfather, Alexander Mitchell, born in Ellon, Aberdeenshire, Scotland, was a banker, railroad financier, and Democratic Wisconsin congressman.