Vern Mikkelsen (1928 - 2013)

Mikkelsen was born in Parlier, California and was raised in the Danish-American community of Askov, Minnesota. His father, Michael, was an immigrant from Denmark who became a Lutheran pastor in Askov. in a town of primarily Danish-Americans.  Mikkelsen entered Hamline University in Saint Paul, Minnesota on a basketball scholarship at the age of 16. In […]

Michael Weiner (1961 - 2013)

Michael S. Weiner (December 21, 1961 – November 21, 2013) was an executive director of the Major League Baseball Players Association. He assumed the role on June 22, 2009, replacing Donald Fehr, becoming only the fifth executive director of the union. Weiner joined the organization in September 1988 and had been general counsel since 2004. […]

Charlotte Zolotow (1915 - 2013)

Charlotte Shapiro was born in Norfolk, Virginia. She studied writing with Helen C. White at the University of Wisconsin Madison from 1933 to 1936 and then moved to New York City where she started at Harper & Bros as secretary to the children’s books editor Ursula Nordstrom.  She was married to Maurice Zolotow from 1938 […]

Glafcos Clerides (1919 - 2013)

Clerides was born and died in Nicosia. He was the eldest son of the lawyer and statesman Ioannis Clerides. Clerides was married to Lila-Irene. They have a daughter, Katherine, who is a member of the House of the Representatives for the Democratic Rally Party. During World War II, he served in the British Royal Air Force. […]

Todd Christensen (1956 - 2013)

Christensen was born in Bellefonte, Pennsylvania, on August 3, 1956, to Ned Jay and June Christensen. His father was working on a doctorate degree at Pennsylvania State University at that time. After teaching in West Virginia, his father was offered a professorship in Eugene, Oregon, when Todd was 5 and the family relocated. Athletically, Christensen’s […]

Dan Lurie (1923 - 2013)

Dan Lurie (April 1, 1923 – November 6, 2013) was a founding father of bodybuilding, television star, entrepreneur, world record holder for amazing feats of strength and a physical fitness pioneer that won the Mr. America title of “America’s Most Muscular Man” four times by 1949 and made history arm wrestling U.S. President Ronald Reagan […]

Jack Mitchell (1925 - 2013)

Mitchell was born in Key West, Florida in 1925; his family moved to New Smyrna Beach, Florida, in 1932. He started photography at eleven, as the darkroom assistant to his sister. He then moved on to taking his own photographs, and was soon contributing photographs to the Daytona News Journal and New Smyrna Beach News. […]

Ace Parker (1912 - 2013)

Ace Parker was the son of Ernest and Mabel Parker and grew up near Norfolk, Virginia. He attended Woodrow Wilson High School in Portsmouth, graduating with the class of 1933 and starring in five sports. He enrolled at Duke University as a freshman in 1933.  At Duke, Parker competed in three sports: football, basketball and […]

Editta Sherman (1912 - 2013)

Editta Sherman (née Rinaldo; July 9, 1912 – November 1, 2013) was an Italian-American photographer, often referred to as the “Duchess of Carnegie Hall”, since she lived and worked in Carnegie Hall Artist Studios for over 60 years. Originally formed as a diverse artist enclave and bohemian work-live rental studios to financially support Andrew Carnegie’s […]

Walt Bellamy (1939 - 2013)

Bellamy chose to play basketball at Indiana University. “In the summer after my junior year of high school I played with some guys from Indiana,” he said. “Indiana at the time was the closest school to the South that would accept African-Americans. It was an easy transition for me to make. Not that I was […]

Paul Blair (1944 - 2013)

Blair was born in Cushing, Oklahoma but grew up in Los Angeles where he attended Manual Arts High School. An accomplished athlete, he played basketball, baseball and track while a student. Blair was originally signed by the New York Mets as an amateur free agent in 1961. After spending the 1962 season in their farm […]

Joan Fontaine (1917 - 2013)

Joan de Havilland was born in Tokyo, Japan, to English parents. Her father, Walter Augustus de Havilland (August 31, 1872 – May 23, 1968), was educated at the University of Cambridge and served as an English professor at the Imperial University in Tokyo before becoming a patent attorney with a practice in Japan. Her mother, […]

Eleanor Parker (1922 - 2013)

Eleanor Parker Born on June 26, 1922, in Cedarville, Ohio, she later moved with her family to East Cleveland, Ohio, where she attended public schools and graduated from Shaw High School. After high school, at the age of 18, she was signed by Warner Brothers in 1941. She was cast that year in the film […]

Gia Allemand (1983 - 2013)

Gia Marie Allemand was born to Eugene and Donna Allemand in the Howard Beach neighborhood of Queens, New York City, and grew up in the borough of Staten Island and nearby in suburban Long Island, where she graduated from Lindenhurst High School in 2001. Allemand’s parents separated in 1992, later divorcing; Donna Allemand married Tony […]

Lisa Robin Kelly (1970 - 2013)

Lisa Robin Kelly was born in Connecticut and raised there in the town of Southington. She made her debut in a 1992 episode of Married… with Children entitled “Kelly Doesn’t Live Here Anymore”. She appeared again in 1997 on episodes of Charmed and Silk Stalkings, as well as in direct-to-video and TV movies, such as […]

August Schellenberg (1936 - 2013)

According to his official website, Schellenberg was born and lived in Montreal, Quebec until moving to Toronto, Ontario in 1967. He was of Mohawk and Swiss-German descent. He established himself in Toronto until 1995. He lived in Dallas, Texas with his wife, actress Joan Karasevich. He was the father of three daughters, two with Karasevich. […]

Elmore Leonard (1925 - 2013)

Leonard was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, the son of Flora Amelia (née Rive) and Elmore John Leonard, Sr. Because his father worked as a site locator for General Motors, the family moved frequently for several years. In 1934, the family settled in Detroit.  He graduated from the University of Detroit Jesuit High School in […]

Sid Bernstein (1918 - 2013)

Sid Bernstein was born in New York City in 1918, and was adopted by a Russian Jewish family. He studied journalism at Columbia University, before working in a ballroom and joining the US Army in 1943. During World War II, he was stationed in Britain, and also served in France with the 602nd Anti-Aircraft Artillery […]

Julie Harris (1925 - 2013)

Harris was born Julia Ann Harris in Grosse Pointe, Michigan, the daughter of Elsie L. (née Smith), a nurse, and William Pickett Harris, an investment banker. She graduated from Grosse Pointe Country Day School, which later merged with two others to form the University Liggett School. In New York City she attended The Hewitt School. […]

Muriel Siebert (1928 - 2013)

Siebert began her career working at various brokerages. In 1967, she founded her own eponymous firm, Muriel Siebert & Co., Inc., beginning by doing research for institutions, and buying and selling financial analyses. That same year, she applied for a seat on the New York Stock Exchange. Of the first ten men she asked to […]

David Frost (1939 - 2013)

David Frost David Paradine Frost was born in Tenterden, Kent, on 7 April 1939, the son of a Methodist minister of Huguenot descent, the Rev. Wilfred John “W. J.” Paradine Frost, and his wife, Mona (Aldrich); he had two elder sisters. While living in Gillingham, Kent, he was taught in the Bible class of the […]

Frederik Pohl (1919 - 2013)

Pohl was the son of Frederik George Pohl (a salesman of Germanic descent) and Anna Jane Mason. Pohl Sr. held various jobs, and the Pohls lived in such wide-flung locations as Texas, California, New Mexico and the Panama Canal Zone. The family settled in Brooklyn when Pohl was around seven.  He attended Brooklyn Technical High […]

Saul Landau (1936 - 2013)

A graduate of Manhattan’s Stuyvesant High School, he also earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in history from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Later he worked towards, but never completed, a doctorate at Stanford University.  He donated his early papers and films to the Wisconsin Center for Film and Television Research. Landau authored 14 books, produced […]

Ray Dolby (1933 - 2013)

Dolby was born in Portland, Oregon, the son of Esther Eufemia (née Strand) and Earl Milton Dolby, an inventor. He was raised in San Francisco and attended Sequoia High School (class of 1951) in Redwood City, California. As a teenager in the decade following World War II, he held part-time and summer jobs at Ampex […]

Marcella Hazan (1924 - 2013)

Hazan was born in 1924 in the village of Cesenatico in Emilia-Romagna.  She earned a doctorate in natural sciences and biology from the University of Ferrara. In 1955 she married Victor Hazan, an Italian-born, New York-raised Sephardic Jew who subsequently gained fame as a wine writer, and the couple moved to New York City a […]

Tom Clancy (1947 - 2013)

Tom Clancy was born at Franklin Square Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland, on April 12, 1947, and grew up in the Northwood neighborhood. He was the second of three children to Thomas Clancy, who worked for the United States Postal Service, and Catherine Clancy, who worked in a store’s credit department. His mother worked in order […]

Phil Chevron (1957 - 2013)

Chevron grew up in Santry, a suburb of Dublin. Beginning in the late 1970s, he was lead singer and co-founder of the punk rock group The Radiators from Space, receiving some critical acclaim but little widespread popularity or financial success. Following a temporary breakup of the band in 1981, he lived in London for a […]

Oscar Hijuelos (1951 - 2013)

Hijuelos was born in Morningside Heights, Manhattan, to Cuban immigrant parents, Pascual and Magdalena (Torrens) Hijuelos, both from Holguín, Cuba. His father worked as a hotel cook. As a young child, he suffered from acute nephritis after a vacation trip to Cuba with his mother and brother José, and was in St. Luke’s Convalescent Hospital, […]

Hans Riegel (1923 - 2013)

Johannes Peter “Hans” Riegel (10 March 1923 – 15 October 2013) was a German entrepreneur who owned and operated the confectioner Haribo since 1946.  Born in Bonn, he was the oldest son of the company’s founder Hans Riegel, Sr., who invented the gummy bear in 1922. After his graduation from the Jesuit boarding school Aloisiuskolleg, […]

Ed Lauter (1938 - 2013)

Of both German and Irish descent, Lauter was born and raised in Long Beach, New York, the son of Sally Lee, a 1920s Broadway actress and dancer, and Edward Matthew Lauter. After graduating from high school, he majored in English Literature in college and received a B.A. degree in 1961 from the C.W. Post campus […]