 John T. "Til" Hazel Jr. was born at Georgetown Hospital in the city of Washington, D.C. His father, John T. Hazel, was a prominent Arlington, Virginia surgeon who also owned a farm in rural Mclean, Virginia; his mother, Ruth Douglas Hazel, was a homemaker.Hazel attended and graduated from Arlington's Washington-Lee High School.Presented with the option of either attending Iowa State University to study agriculture or enrolling at Harvard University, Hazel chose Harvard, where he studied American history and graduated cum laude in 1951.