He spent his early childhood in their home on Bronson Terrace at the eastern edge of Forest Park, where for a time his father also maintained his dental office.

[5] During what he would later describe as a "mediocre" high school career,[6] Redden enlisted in the United States Army in 1946,[7] serving two years as a PFC in occupied Japan.

[2] He married Joan Johnson in 1951[2] and took several low-end jobs, including working coding survey sheets for the Gillette Razor Company,[6] and managed not only to earn a belated high school diploma, but went on to Boston College and Boston College Law School, graduating with a Bachelor of Laws in 1954, and was admitted to the Massachusetts bar the same year.

[2] It was as a favor to a friend seeking a challenger to the incumbent Republican for the 19th District in the Oregon House of Representatives that Redden entered his first political race in 1962.

[12] After 2003, Redden emerged as a central figure in the tension between industry and environmental concerns about the hydroelectric dams on the Columbia River, rejecting two management plans advanced by the federal government of the United States, on the grounds that they failed to protect various species of salmon, as required by the Endangered Species Act, and suggested that if the Bush administration failed to adequately address the salmon issue, management of the dams could fall to the courts.

[1] The federal courthouse in Medford, Oregon, where Redden practiced law for 17 years,[2] was renamed by an Act of Congress in his honor.