Gary Mason (1962 - 2011)

Gary Mason was a British boxer who was based in Chatham, Kent, England. He was born in Jamaica. Mason fought at the heavyweight level and became the British heavyweight champion in 1989. Mason was a top ten contender, his main strengths being his punching power, heart and physical strength. Mason fought 38 times as a […]

John Rice (1918 - 2011)

John Rice was an American umpire in Major League Baseball who worked in the American League for nineteen seasons. Rice umpired in three All-Star Games and four World Series. Rice was born in Homestead, Pennsylvania. He played semi-professional baseball in Chicago before joining the United States Marine Corps during World War II, serving from 1942 […]

Eunice W. Johnson (1916 - 2010)

Born Eunice Walker on April 4, 1916, in Selma, Alabama, she graduated with a degree in sociology from Talladega College in 1938. During her matriculation at college Eunice joined Delta Sigma Theta.  Together with her husband, she established The Negro Digest in 1942, a magazine styled after Reader’s Digest. The rapid growth of their first […]

Eileen Ford (1922 - 2014)

Eileen Cecile Otte was born in Manhattan and raised in suburban Great Neck, Long Island, the only daughter of four children of Loretta Marie (née Laine) and Nathaniel Otte. Eileen had been a model during the summers of her freshman and sophomore years at Barnard College, modeling for the Harry Conover Modeling Agency, one of […]

Rudolph Moshammer (1940 - 2005)

Born in Munich, Germany, Moshammer had an education in retail industry trading. He began to design fashion in the 1960s.  His base of existence was his boutique “Carnaval de Venise” in Munich’s high society street, Maximilianstraße. There he created fashion for wealthy men from furs, cashmere, and silk. With this strategy he attracted the high […]

Helmut Newton (1920 - 2004)

Newton was born in Berlin, the son of Klara “Claire” (née Marquis) and Max Neustädter, a button factory owner. His family was Jewish. Newton attended the Heinrich-von-Treitschke-Realgymnasium and the American School in Berlin. Interested in photography from the age of 12 when he purchased his first camera, he worked for the German photographer Yva (de) […]

Isabella Blow (1958 - 2007)

Born Isabella Delves Broughton in Marylebone, London, England, she was the eldest child of Major Sir Evelyn Delves Broughton, a military officer, and his second wife, Helen Mary Shore, a barrister. Sir Evelyn was the only son of Jock Delves Broughton; his sister, Rosamond, married Simon Fraser, 15th Lord Lovat in 1938.  Blow had two […]

Ossie Clark (1942 - 1996)

Born in Warrington, Cheshire, England in 1942, Raymond Clark’s parents, Anne and Samuel Clark, moved to Oswaldtwistle during the war, hence his nickname, “Ossie”. Ossie’s mother, Anne Grace Clark, was in labour with Ossie for seven days during an air raid in World War II. Anne had been expecting a girl and so had no […]

Charley Patton (1891 - 1934)

Charley Patton Patton was born in Hinds County, Mississippi, near the town of Edwards, and lived most of his life in Sunflower County in the Mississippi Delta. Most sources say he was born in 1891, but there is some debate about this, and the years 1887 and 1894 have also been suggested. Patton’s parentage and […]

Rip Hawk (1930 - 2012)

Rip Hawk American professional wrestler best known by his ring name, Rip Hawk. He began his wrestling career in the Mid-Western United States before joining Jim Crockett Promotions (JCP) in the early 1960s. In the company, he teamed with fellow wrestler Swede Hanson as the “Blond Bombers,” and the duo held several championships. In the […]

Marit Allen (1941 - 2007)

Marit Allen was born in Cheshire, England on 17 September 1941 to a Norwegian mother and an English father. She was a pupil at Adcote School, an independent girls’ boarding school in Shropshire from 1951 and 1959. She then graduated from the University of Grenoble, in France.  Allen’s career in fashion began in 1961 when […]

Joseph Albert Walker (1970 - 1966)

Born in Washington, Pennsylvania, Walker graduated from Trinity High School in 1938. He earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in physics from Washington and Jefferson College in 1942, before entering the United States Army Air Forces. He was married and had four children.  During World War II, Walker flew the Lockheed P-38 Lightning fighter and […]

Robert Henry Lawrence (1935 - 1967)

At the age of 16, he graduated in the top 10 percent from Englewood High School in Chicago. At the age of 20, he graduated from Bradley University with a Bachelor’s Degree in Chemistry. At Bradley, he distinguished himself as Cadet Commander in the Air Force ROTC and received the commission of Second Lieutenant in […]

Corrie Sanders (1966 - 2012)

Corrie Sanders He made a name for himself in the sport of boxing, when he scored a 2nd-round technical knockout victory over highly-regarded Ukrainian fighter Wladimir Klitschko to capture the WBO Heavyweight Title on March 8th, 2003. After putting together an impressive amateur career, he turned professional in 1989. Sanders established himself in his native […]

Johnnie Wright (1914 - 2011)

Johnnie Wright Wright first performed with Anglin in 1936. In 1937, he married Kitty Wells. The two, along with Wright’s sister Louise, performed as Johnnie Wright & the Harmony Girls. In 1939, Wright and Anglin formed the duo Johnnie & Jack. They teamed up full-time in the 1940s and, except for the time Anglin spent […]

Oscar Sullivan (1919 - 2012)

Oscar Sullivan Lonzo and Oscar were an American country music  duo founded in 1945 originally consisting of Lloyd George (1924-1991) as “Lonzo” and Rollin “Oscar” Sullivan  (1919-2012), best known for being the first to perform the 1948 song “I’m My Own Grandpa “. George departed in 1950, and Lonzo was later portrayed by Johnny Sullivan (1917-1967) from 1950 to […]

Dorothy McGuire (1928 - 2012)

Dorothy McGuire She was one-third of the music trio The McGuire Sisters. Dorothy was the middle of three sisters Christine (oldest) and Phyllis (youngest), their mother was an ordained minister, they were born and raised in Middletown, Ohio, a Northern suburb of Cincinnati. Due to their strict upbringing, contemporary music was not allowed and the […]

Joe South (1940 - 2012)

Joe South Born Joseph Alfred Souter into a family of diverse talent, his father was a guitarist and his mother penned romantic poetry, he developed a fondness for country music while listening to programs broadcasted from Nashville on the radio. He dropped out of Southern Polytechnic State University to pursue a career in music and […]

Sugar Ray Robinson (1921 - 1989)

Sugar Ray Robinson American professional boxer, six times a world champion: once as a welterweight (147 pounds), from 1946 to 1951, and five times as a middleweight (160 pounds), between 1951 and 1960. He is considered by many authorities to have been the best fighter in history. He won 89 amateur fights without defeat, fighting […]

Bert Sugar (1937 - 2012)

Bert Sugar Bert Sugar, boxing’s human encyclopedia, a prolific writer and editor and a flamboyant and ubiquitous presence in the world of the ring, died on Sunday in Mount Kisco, N.Y. He was 75. He had lung cancer and died of cardiac arrest at Northern Westchester Hospital, his daughter, Jennifer Frawley, said. The author or […]

Julio César González (1976 - 2012)

Julio César González A top-ranked contender of the Light-Heavyweight Division during the 2000s, he battled some of the biggest names of that weight-class during the decade. Born Julio Cesar Gonzalez Ibarra, he was raised in the Far Western region of Mexico and began training as a boxer during his youth, later fighting in the Amateur […]

Joan Taylor (1929 - 2012)

Joan Taylor Her mother was a former vaudeville singer and dancer, her father was employed as a Hollywood prop-man. He later operated a cinema theater in the Northern Chicago-suburb of Lake Forest, where Rose was both exposed to and enthralled by motion pictures which shaped her future life. Initially she dreamed of becoming a dancer […]

Larry Butler (1942 - 2012)

Larry Butler country music producer/songwriter. From the mid-1970s through the 1980s, he worked with Kenny Rogers. Many of his albums with Rogers went either gold or platinum and accumulated many millions of sales around the world. These albums include Kenny Rogers (1976), The Gambler (1978), Gideon (1980) and I Prefer The Moonlight (1987). Rogers and […]

Michael Adams (1930 - 1967)

Born in Sacramento, California, Adams graduated from Sacramento Junior College. He enlisted in the United States Air Force in 1950 and earned his pilot wings and commission in 1952 at Webb Air Force Base, Texas. He served as a fighter-bomber pilot during the Korean War, followed by 30 months with the 813th Fighter-Bomber Squadron at […]

Stephen Thorne (1953 - 1986)

Stephen Douglas Thorne (February 11, 1953 – May 24, 1986) was an American Naval officer and a NASA astronaut candidate.  He was born on February 11, 1953, in Frankfurt, Germany, and graduated from the US Naval Academy in 1975. He was a Navy fighter pilot from 1976 until he became a test pilot in 1981. […]

Roger Chaffee (1935 - 1967)

Roger Bruce Chaffee was born on February 15, 1935, in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where he became an Eagle Scout and graduated from Central High School in 1953. Turning down a possible appointment to the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis, Maryland, Chaffee accepted a Naval ROTC scholarship and in September 1953 enrolled at the Illinois […]

Edward Higgins White II (1930 - 1967)

White was born on November 14, 1930, in San Antonio, Texas, to parents Edward H. White, Sr. (1901–1978), who became a major general in the U.S. Air Force, and Mary Rosina White (née Haller; 1900–1983). He attended school in his hometown and became a member of the Boy Scouts of America, where he earned the […]

Theodore Freeman (1930 - 1964)

Freeman was born on February 18, 1930, in Haverford, Pennsylvania, and completed his secondary education in 1948. He attended the University of Delaware at Newark for one year, then entered the United States Naval Academy and graduated in 1953 with a Bachelor of Science degree. In 1960, he received a Master of Science degree in […]

Paul Bearer (1954 - 2013)

Paul Bearer Professional Wrestling/Entertainment Manager. Born William Alvin Moody, he will most likely be remembered by his ring names ‘Paul Bearer’ and ‘Percival Pringle III’, as a professional wrestling manager for World Class Championship Wrestling (WCCW) and World Wrestling Federation (WWF—later WWE). As a teenager, he became involved in wrestling as a ringside photographer and […]

Sonny Carter (1947 - 1991)

Sonny Carter was born in Macon, Georgia, but considered Warner Robins, Georgia, to be his hometown. He graduated from Lanier High School in Macon in 1965, and during his high school years was involved actively in Macon-based Troop 19 of the Boy Scouts of America, where he also served a term as Senior Patrol Leader, […]