He also participated on the speech and debate team. He graduated with a bachelor's degree in literature and a minor in psychology from Whitman College in Walla Walla, where he was a member of the Gamma Zeta Chapter of the Beta Theta Pi fraternity. He attended Whitman College but studied at University of Puget Sound during the fall semester of 1949. West attended Walla Walla High School during his freshman and sophomore years and later enrolled in Lakeside School in Seattle. He moved to Seattle with his mother when he was 15, following his parents' divorce.
Following her example, West told his father as a young man that he intended to go to Hollywood after completing school. His father, Otto Anderson (1903–1984) was a farmer descending from Scania in southern Sweden and his mother, Audrey Volenne (née Speer 1906–1969) was an opera singer and concert pianist who left her Hollywood dreams to care for her family. Adam West was born William West Anderson on September 19, 1928, in Walla Walla, Washington.
