DeWitt Wallace (1889 - 1981)

Born in St. Paul, Minnesota, where his father was on the faculty (and later president) of Macalester College, he attended Mount Hermon School as a youth (now Northfield Mount Hermon School). Wallace attended college at Macalester from 1907 to 1909 but transferred to the University of California, Berkeley for two years. He returned to St. […]

Roy Wilkins (1901 - 1981)

Wilkins was born in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1901. His mother died when he was four years old, after which Wilkins and his siblings were raised by an aunt and uncle in St. Paul, Minnesota, where they attended local schools. Wilkins graduated from the University of Minnesota with a degree in sociology in 1923. In 1929, […]

Bobby Sands (1954 - 1981)

Sands was the firstborn son of a Roman Catholic family. His parents were both raised in the Catholic slums of Belfast. After marrying, they relocated to the new development of Abbots Cross in Newtownabbey, County Antrim outside north Belfast in an effort to avoid the poverty and sectarian violence of their youth. His parents were […]

Edith Head (1897 - 1981)

She was born Edith Claire Posener in San Bernardino, California, the daughter of Jewish parents, Max Posener and Anna E. Levy. Her father, born in January 1858, was a naturalized American citizen from Germany, who came to the United States in 1876. Her mother was born in St. Louis, Missouri in 1875, the daughter of […]

Richard Dysart (1929 - 2015)

Richard Dysart Richard Dysart, the Emmy-winning actor who portrayed the cranky senior partner Leland McKenzie in the slick, long-running NBC drama L.A. Law, has died. He was 86. Dysart, who also played Coach in the original 1972 Broadway production of Jason Miller’s Pulitzer Prize-winning That Championship Season, died Sunday at home in Santa Monica after […]

James Best (1926 - 2015)

James Best Actor James Best, who played the often confused Sheriff Rosco P. Coltrane on “The Dukes of Hazzard,” died on Monday evening after a brief illness and battle with pneumonia, according to his rep. He was 88. Best got his start as an actor during World War II when he joined the military theatrical […]

Ben Powers (1950 - 2015)

Ben Powers Comedian, actor, composer and artist, Alton ‘Ben” Powers, best known for his role as Thelma Evans’ husband, and football player, Keith Anderson, in the 1970’s hit series “Good Times” has died. Ben, also played “Moochie” on the CBS-TV hit “Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer” starring with Stacey Keach. Ben made numerous TV guest appearances […]

Sawyer Sweeten (1995 - 2015)

Sawyer Sweeten Gathering at a funeral home in Riverside, California, approximately 200 family and friends stood in silence as six pallbearers – including the former Everybody Loves Raymond actor‘s twin brother Sullivan and his stepfather Jerry Gini – loaded Sawyer’s casket into a hearse trailer attached to a motorcycle. “He loved his Harley-Davidson,” Gini and […]

Buddy Emmons (1937 - 2015)

Buddy Emmons Influential pedal steel guitarist Buddy Emmons, who recorded with country music greats and toured as a bass player for Roger Miller, has died at age 78, the Nashville Musicians Association said on Thursday. Emmons arrived in Nashville in 1955 to play with Little Jimmy Dickens’ Country Boys, then considered the liveliest band in […]

Lynn Anderson (1947 - 2015)

Lynn Anderson Anderson was born September 26th, 1947, in Grand Forks, North Dakota, to songwriters Casey and Liz Anderson, the latter of whom was a recording artist and writer, penning Merle Haggard’s “I Am a Lonesome Fugitive” and “(My Friends Are Gonna Be) Strangers.” Raised in Fair Oaks, California, Anderson frequently entered horse shows as […]

Enid Blyton (1897 - 1968)

Enid Mary Blyton (11 August 1897 – 28 November 1968) was an English children’s writer whose books have been among the world’s best-sellers since the 1930s, selling more than 600 million copies. Blyton’s books are still enormously popular, and have been translated into almost 90 languages; her first book, Child Whispers, a 24-page collection of […]

Édith Piaf (1915 - 1963)

Piaf’s mother abandoned her at birth, and she lived for a short time with her maternal grandmother, Emma (Aïcha). When her father enlisted with the French Army in 1916 to fight in World War I, he took her to his mother, who ran a brothel in Normandy. There, prostitutes helped look after Piaf. The bordello […]

Emily Brontë (1818 - 1848)

Emily Brontë was born on 30 July 1818 in the village of Thornton, West Riding of Yorkshire, in Northern England, to Maria Branwell and an Irish father, Patrick Brontë. She was the younger sister of Charlotte Brontë and the fifth of six children, though the two oldest girls, Maria and Elizabeth, died in childhood. In […]

Roddy Piper (1954 - 2015)

As best as we can tell, Roderick George Toombs was born. Rumor has it that it happened in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada-allegedly in a war time house on Victoria Avenue. For those not acquainted with Saskatoon, it’s one of the coldest places on earth, reaching 100 below with windchill. That may explain why Roddy hit the […]

Gunnar Myrdal (1898 - 1987)

Myrdal was born on 6 December 1898 in Gustafs, Sweden, to Karl Adolf Pettersson (1876–1934), a railroad employee, and his wife Anna Sofia Karlsson (1878–1965). He took the name Myrdal in 1914 after his ancestors farm Myr in Dalarna.  There is a possibly apocryphal story about an interaction between him and Gustav Cassel, where Cassel […]

Luis Barragán (1902 - 1988)

Barragán was born in Guadalajara in Jalisco, Mexico. Educated as an engineer, he graduated from the Escuela Libre de Ingenieros in Guadalajara in 1923.  After graduation, he travelled through Spain and France. While in France he became aware of the writings of Ferdinand Bac, a German-French writer, designer and artist who Barragán cited throughout his […]

Pappy Boyington (1912 - 1988)

Gregory Boyington was born on December 4, 1912 in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. Sometimes he is erroneously quoted as being born in 1906. He grew up in the logging town of St. Maries, Idaho and in Tacoma, Washington, where he was a wrestler at Lincoln High School. He took his first flight when he was six […]

Billy Carter (1937 - 1988)

Born in Plains, Georgia, Carter attended Emory University in Atlanta but did not complete a degree. He served four years in the United States Marine Corps, then returned to Plains to work with his brother in the family business of growing peanuts. In 1955, he married Sybil Spires (born 1938), also of Plains. They were […]

Chet Baker (1929 - 1988)

Baker was born and raised in a musical household in Yale, Oklahoma; his father, Chesney Baker, Sr., was a professional guitar player, and his mother, Vera (née Moser) was a talented pianist who worked in a perfume factory. His maternal grandmother, Randi Moser, was Norwegian. Baker began his musical career singing in a church choir. […]

Louise Nevelson (1899 - 1988)

Louise Nevelson was born Leah Berliawsky in 1899 in Perislav, Poltava Governorate, Russian Empire, to Minna Sadie and Isaac Berliawsky, a contractor and lumber merchant. Even though the family lived comfortably, Nevelson’s relatives had begun to leave the Russian Empire for America in the 1880s. The Berliawskys had to stay behind, as Isaac, the youngest […]

John Houseman (1902 - 1988)

Houseman produced numerous Broadway productions, including Heartbreak House, Three Sisters, The Beggar’s Opera and several Shakespearean plays, including a famous “Blackshirt” Julius Caesar directed by Orson Welles in 1937. He also directed Lute Song, The Country Girl and Don Juan in Hell, among others.  Houseman himself worked as a speculator in the international grain markets, […]

Christina Onassis (1950 - 1988)

Christina Onassis, the only daughter of the Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis and his first wife, Athina Livanos, was born in New York City at LeRoy Sanitarium. Her maternal grandfather was Stavros G. Livanos, founder of the Livanos shipping empire. Onassis had an older brother, Alexander. She and Alexander were raised and educated in France, […]

Irving Berlin (1888 - 1989)

Irving Berlin (born Israel Isidore Baline, May 11, 1888 – September 22, 1989) was a Russian-born Jewish-American composer and lyricist. Widely considered one of the greatest songwriters in American history, his music forms a great part of the Great American Songbook. He published his first song, “Marie from Sunny Italy”, in 1907, receiving 37 cents […]

Diana Vreeland (1903 - 1989)

She was born as Diana Dalziel in Paris, France, at 5, avenue du Bois-de-Boulogne (Avenue Foch since World War I). Vreeland was the eldest daughter of American socialite mother Emily Key Hoffman (1876–1928) and British father Frederick Young Dalziel (1868–1960). Hoffman was a descendant of George Washington’s brother as well as a cousin of Francis […]

William Schuman (1910 - 1992)

Schuman was born into a Jewish family in Manhattan, New York City, son of Samuel and Rachel Schuman. He was named after the 27th U.S. president, William Howard Taft, though his family preferred to call him Bill. Schuman played the violin and banjo as a child, but his overwhelming passion was baseball. He attended Temple […]

George Murphy (1902 - 1992)

He was born in New Haven, Connecticut, of Irish Catholic extraction, the son of Michael Charles “Mike” Murphy, athletic trainer and coach, and the former Nora Long. He was educated at Peddie School, Trinity-Pawling School, and Yale University in his native New Haven. He worked as a tool maker for the Ford Motor Company, as […]

Alex Haley (1921 - 1992)

Alex Haley was born in Ithaca, New York, on August 11, 1921, and was the oldest of three brothers and a sister. Haley lived with his family in Henning, Tennessee, before returning to Ithaca with his family when he was five years old. Haley’s father was Simon Haley, a professor of agriculture at Alabama A&M […]

Hal Roach (1892 - 1992)

Hal Roach was born in Elmira, New York, the grandson of Irish immigrants. A presentation by the great American humorist Mark Twain impressed Roach as a young grade school student.  After an adventurous youth that took him to Alaska, Hal Roach arrived in Hollywood, California in 1912 and began working as an extra in silent […]

Jo Ann Robinson (1912 - 1992)

Born near Culloden, Georgia, she was the youngest of twelve children. She attended Fort Valley State College and then became a public school teacher in Macon, where she was married to Wilbur Robinson for a short time. Five years later, she went to Atlanta, where she earned an M.A. in English at Atlanta University. After […]

Heinrich Eberbach (1895 - 1992)

During late 1914 Eberbach fought in France as a corporal, and by February 1915 he was promoted to Lieutenant. During 1915 he was wounded twice in France, lost his nose due to a French bullet (a rubber replacement was made) and was captured by the French. In December 1916 he was exchanged for a French […]