He roomed with John F. Kennedy at Choate, a Connecticut boarding school, starting a friendship with the future president.

[1] He graduated from Phillips Exeter Academy and earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in economics from Yale University.

[2][3] After graduating from college, Verity tramped around the world and worked as maître d' at an upscale Manhattan restaurant.

According to Jonathan Chait of The New Republic, Verity kept a passage from Ayn Rand's novel Atlas Shrugged on his desk, including the line "How well you do your work .

He died on January 3, 2007, a complications of pneumonia, in Beaufort, South Carolina, at the age of 89, twenty-three days before his 90th birthday.