Herbert Brownell (1904 - 1996)

Herbert Brownell was admitted to the bar in New York, and began his practice in New York City. In February 1929, he joined the law firm of Lord Day & Lord in New York, and except for periods of public service, he remained with them until his retirement in 1989. He married Doris McCarter on […]

Benjamin Brewster (1816 - 1888)

In 1857, Benjamin Brewster married as his first wife, Elizabeth von Myerbach de Reinfeldts, the widow of Dr. Shulte of Paris, France. Elizabeth died in 1868; however, Benjamin continued to spend many vacations with his wife’s parents in Germany near Cologne. He was remarried on July 12, 1870. His second wife, Mary Walker, was born in […]

Elliot Richardson (1920 - 1999)

Elliot Richardson had the distinction of serving in three high-level Executive Branch posts in a single year—the tumultuous year of 1973—as the Watergate Scandal came to dominate the attention of official Washington, and the American public at large. He served three relatively uneventful years as the Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare for a popular […]

John Sirica (1904 - 1992)

John Sirica fought under assumed names as a boxer in Washington and Miami in the 1920s and 1930s. He was torn between a career as a fighter and the career in law that he followed after earning a law degree at his third attempt. Sirica was in private practice of law in Washington, D.C. from 1926 […]

Maurice Stans (1908 - 1998)

Maurice Stans was born on March 22, 1908 in Shakopee, Minnesota, the son of James Hubert Stans and the former Mathilda Nyssen Stans. His father was the only child of Jan Hendrik Stans and Maria Catharina Crijns, a Belgian couple who immigrated to the United States in 1880. Maurice Stans graduated from Shakopee High School […]

Virginia Minor (1824 - 1894)

Virginia Louisa Minor (March 27, 1824, Caroline County, Virginia – August 14, 1894, St. Louis, Missouri) was an American women’s suffrage activist. She is best remembered as the plaintiff in Minor v. Happersett, an 1874 United States Supreme Court case in which Minor unsuccessfully argued that the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution gave […]

James Hood (1942 - 2013)

James Alexander Hood (November 10, 1942 – January 17, 2013) was one of the first African Americans to enroll at the University of Alabama in 1963 and was made famous when Alabama Governor George Wallace blocked him from enrolling at the all-white university, an incident which became known as the “Stand in the Schoolhouse Door”. On […]

Muriel Humphrey Brown (1912 - 1998)

Muriel Humphrey Brown was born Muriel Fay Buck in Huron, South Dakota, daughter of Andrew E. Buck and his wife, the former Jessie Mae Pierce. She attended Huron College and met Humphrey in 1934, when she was working as a bookkeeper. They married on September 3, 1936, saying, “It was love at first waltz”. They […]

Herbert Humphrey (1911 - 1978)

Hubert Horatio Humphrey, Jr. (May 27, 1911 – January 13, 1978) was an American politician who served as the 38th Vice President of the United States under President Lyndon B. Johnson from 1965 to 1969. Humphrey twice served in the United States Senate, representing Minnesota from 1949 to 1964 and 1971 to 1978. He was […]

Jerry Parr (1930 - 2015)

Jerry Parr received his B.A. in English and Philosophy from Vanderbilt University in 1962. In 1987, he received his M.S. in pastoral counseling from Loyola University in Maryland. Parr was also an ordained minister. In 1987, he received an honorary doctorate in Humane Letters from Eureka College. Jerry Parr’s interest in joining the Secret Service originated […]

Alberto Erede (1909 - 2001)

Alberto Erede (8 November 1909 – 12 April 2001) was an Italian conductor, particularly associated with operatic work. Born in Genoa, Erede studied there before studying at the Verdi Conservatory in Milan, then with Felix Weingartner at Basle, and after this with Fritz Busch at Dresden. He made his debut in Turin in 1935, conducting Der […]

Suzanne Danco (1911 - 2000)

Suzanne Danco was born in Brussels and grew up in a Flemish background, although French was her native language. She studied piano, music history and singing at the Conservatoire Royal de Bruxelles, and in 1936 won a vocal competition in Vienna after which conductor Erich Kleiber recommended that she continue her studies in Prague with […]

Fernando Corena (1916 - 1984)

Fernando Corena was born in Geneva, Switzerland, to a Turkish father (the name was Korena) and an Italian mother. He studied theology at the Fribourg University, hoping to become a priest. After winning a vocal contest, he turned his attention to music. He first studied in his native Geneva, 1937-38. He was then noticed by […]

Giorgio Tozzi (1923 - 2011)

Giorgio Tozzi was born George John Tozzi in Chicago, Illinois. He studied at DePaul University with Rosa Raisa, Giacomo Rimini and John Daggett Howell. He later studied singing in New York City with Beverley Peck Johnson. He made his professional debut in the Broadway production of Britten’s The Rape of Lucretia in 1948 as Tarquinius. […]

Fritz Reiner (1888 - 1963)

Fritz Reiner was born in Budapest, Austria-Hungary into a secular Jewish family that resided in the Pest area of the city. After preliminary studies in law at his father’s urging, Reiner pursued the study of piano, piano pedagogy, and composition at the Franz Liszt Academy. During his last two years there, his piano teacher was […]

Ernst Haefliger (1919 - 2007)

Ernst Haefliger (6 July 1919 – 17 March 2007) was a Swiss tenor. ErnstHaefliger was born in Davos, Switzerland and studied at the Zürich Conservatory. He studied with Fernando Carpi in Geneva and Julius Patzak in Vienna. In 1943, Haefliger sang for the first time the Evangelist in Bach’s St John Passion in Zurich. After this […]

Lois Marshall (1924 - 1997)

Lois Catherine Marshall, CC (January 29, 1924–February 19, 1997) was a Canadian soprano. Her husband, Weldon Kilburn, had been her early coach and piano accompanist. Born in Toronto, Lois Marshall “began voice studies at age 12 with Weldon Kilburn (at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto), her accompanist and coach until 1971 and to whom […]

Maureen Forrester (1930 - 2010)

Maureen Forrester was born and grew up in Montreal, one of four children of Thomas Forrester, a Scottish cabinetmaker, and his Irish-born wife, the former May Arnold. She sang in church and radio choirs. At age 13, she dropped out of school to help support the family, working as a secretary at Bell Telephone. When her […]

Beverly Sills (1929 - 2007)

Beverly Sills was born Belle Miriam Silverman in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, New York City, to Shirley Bahn (née Sonia Markovna), a musician, and Morris Silverman, an insurance broker. Her parents were Jewish immigrants from Odessa, Ukraine (then part of Russia) and Bucharest, Romania. She was raised in Brooklyn, where she was known, among friends, as […]

Claramae Turner (1920 - 2013)

Born in the high desert, outside Dinuba, California, to Reed Ross Haas and Anna Marie Helen Somma Haas, Claramae Turner began her career at the Bush Street Music Hall in San Francisco, where she sang the contralto leads in Gilbert and Sullivan operas; at the same time she joined the chorus of San Francisco Opera. […]

Norman Treigle (1927 - 1975)

Norman Treigle (pronounced tray-gull) was born in New Orleans, the fifth and final child of a poor carpenter and his wife. Following his 1946 marriage to the former Loraine Siegel, the bass-baritone began vocal studies with the contralto Elisabeth Wood. In 1947, he made his operatic debut with the New Orleans Opera Association, as the […]

Julius Rudel (1921 - 2014)

Julius Rudel (6 March 1921 – 26 June 2014) was an American opera and orchestra conductor. He was born in Vienna and was a student at the city’s Academy of Music. He emigrated to the United States at the age of 17 in 1938 after the country was annexed by Germany. After 1944, he began a […]

Heather Begg (1932 - 2009)

Born in Nelson, New Zealand in 1932, Heather Begg studied in Auckland with Sister Mary Leo and at the New South Wales State Conservatorium, during which time she won the 1955 Sydney Sun Aria contest. She was engaged as a principal mezzo-soprano with the National Opera of Australia from 1954-56. Her professional debut was as […]

Rosetta Reitz (1924 - 2008)

Reitz was born in Utica, New York on September 28, 1924. She attended the University of Buffalo for one year and the University of Wisconsin–Madison for two years. After leaving college, she moved to Manhattan and worked at the Gotham Book Mart, later opening the Four Seasons, a bookstore in Greenwich Village she operated from […]

Lou Smit (1935 - 2010)

Having tried various businesses and failed, Lou Smit prayed for a solution and saw as an answer from God a call he received from a cousin who served on the Colorado Springs Department suggesting that he apply to serve. Smit fell just short of the department’s minimum height of five feet and nine inches, but […]

Patricia Ramsey (1956 - 2006)

Patricia Ramsey was born in Gilbert, West Virginia, the daughter of Nedra Ellen Ann (née Rymer) (1932–2001) and Donald Ray Paugh (born 1931), an engineer and manager at Union Carbide. She graduated from Parkersburg High School in 1975, and attended West Virginia University, where she belonged to the Alpha Xi Delta sorority, and from which […]

Nellie Grant (1855 - 1922)

Nellie Grant (July 4, 1855 – August 30, 1922) was the third child and only daughter of U.S. President Ulysses S. Grant and First Lady Julia Grant. Born near St. Louis, Missouri, Nellie Grant was first named Julia, at the insistence of her father, but was christened Ellen Wrenshall Grant at eighteen months to honor her […]

Frederick Tracy Dent (1820 - 1892)

Frederick Tracy Dent (December 17, 1820–December 23, 1892) was an American general. Born in White Haven, St. Louis County, Missouri, Dent graduated from West Point in 1843. One of Dent’s classmates was Ulysses S. Grant, who married Dent’s sister Julia. The children of Ulysses and Julia Grant included Dent’s namesake, Frederick Dent Grant. Dent was assigned as […]

Enrique Díez Canedo (1879 - 1944)

Enrique Díez Canedo sympathised with Krauseanism and was a denizen of the Ateneo, where he organized a number of acts (homages to Rubén Darío, Benito Pérez Galdós and Mariano de Cavia; and presentations like the one with José María Gabriel y Galán). He frequented the gathering of the Café Regina, where he became friend of […]

Alfonso Reyes (1889 - 1959)

Alfonso Reyes’ parents were Bernardo Reyes and Aurelia Ochoa. His father was in important government positions during the government of Porfirio Díaz, such as the governorship of Nuevo León and the Secretary of War and Navy. Alfonso Reyes was educated primarily in Mexico City. In 1909, he and other like-minded young intellectuals such as Martín Luis Guzmán […]