Bert Sugar (1937 - 2012)

Born in Washington, D.C., Sugar graduated from the University of Maryland. He earned a JD and MBA from the University of Michigan in 1961. After passing the bar exam, he worked in the advertising business in New York City for ten years. During his time in the advertising business, he worked at several different agencies, […]

John Demjanjuk (1920 - 2012)

John Demjanjuk (born Ivan Mykolaiovych Demianiuk; Ukrainian: Іван Миколайович Дем’янюк; 3 April 1920 – 17 March 2012) was a retired Ukrainian-American auto worker, a former soldier in the Soviet Red Army, and a POW during the Second World War.  Although he was a survivor of the notorious Nazi concentration camps system, he was convicted in […]

Robert B. Sherman (1925 - 2012)

Robert Bernard Sherman was born on December 19, 1925, in New York City, to Russian Jewish immigrants, Rosa and Al Sherman. Al Sherman, a songwriter, paid for Robert’s hospital delivery costs with a royalty check that had arrived that day for the song “Save Your Sorrow”. Al Sherman was to become a well known Tin […]

Alex Webster (1931 - 2012)

As the son of recent Scottish immigrants James and Alexandrina Webster, Alex Webster grew up in Kearny, New Jersey, where he attended and played high school football at Kearny High School. Webster played a key role on Kearny High School’s football team which won the 1948 New Jersey High School State Championship. In spite of […]

Fontella Bass (1940 - 2012)

Fontella Bass was born in St. Louis, Missouri, the daughter of gospel singer Martha Bass (a member of the Clara Ward Singers). She was the older sister of the R&B singer David Peaston. At an early age, Fontella showed great musical talent. At five years old she was providing the piano accompaniment for her grandmother’s […]

Harry Carey Jr. (1921 - 2012)

Harry Carey, Jr. was born in the Saugus neighborhood of Santa Clarita, California, the son of actor Harry Carey (1878–1947) and actress Olive Carey (1896–1988). His maternal grandfather was vaudeville entertainer George Fuller Golden. As a boy, he was nicknamed “Dobe”, short for adobe, because of the color of his hair. He served with the […]

James Q. Wilson (1931 - 2012)

James Wilson completed his B.A. at the University of Redlands in 1952, where he was the national collegiate debate champion in 1951 and 1952. He completed an M.A. (1957) and a Ph.D. (1959) in political science at the University of Chicago. From 1961 to 1987, he was the Shattuck Professor of Government at Harvard University. […]

Ken Price (1935 - 2012)

Price was born and raised in Los Angeles, California. Price’s earliest aspirations were to be an artist, “As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be an artist. Even when I was a kid I would make drawings and little books, and cartoons..,” he states. Price enrolled in his first art ceramics […]

Barney Rosset (1922 - 2012)

Rosset was born and raised in Chicago to a Jewish father, Barnet Rosset, and an Irish Catholic mother, Mary (née Tansey). He attended the progressive Francis Parker School, where he was best friends with renowned cinematographer Haskell Wexler. He went on to study at Swarthmore College, UCLA and the New School for Social Research. He […]

Dr. Renato Dulbecco (1914 - 2012)

Dulbecco was born in Catanzaro (Southern Italy) to a Calabrese mother and a Ligurian father. He graduated from high school at 16, then moved to the University of Turin. Despite a strong interest for mathematics and physics, he decided to study medicine. At only 22, he graduated in morbid anatomy and pathology under the supervision […]

Anthony Shadid (1968 - 2012)

From 2003 to 2009 Shadid was a staff writer for The Washington Post where he was an Islamic affairs correspondent based in the Middle East. Before The Washington Post, Shadid worked as Middle East correspondent for the Associated Press based in Cairo and as news editor of the AP bureau in Los Angeles. He spent […]

Gary Carter (1954 - 2012)

Carter was born in Culver City, California in 1954 to Jim Carter, an aircraft worker, and his wife, Inge. Gary was athletic at a young age, winning (along with four other boys) the 7-year old category of the first national Punt, Pass, and Kick skills competition in 1961. When Gary was 12, his mother died […]

Dory Previn (1925 - 2012)

Previn was born in Rahway, New Jersey, the eldest daughter in a strict Catholic family of Irish origin. She had a troubled relationship with her father, especially during childhood. He had served in the First World War and been gassed, and experienced periods of depression and violent mood swings. He tended to alternately embrace and […]

Whitney Houston (1963 - 2012)

Whitney Houston Whitney Elizabeth Houston (August 9, 1963 – February 11, 2012) was an American singer, actress, producer, and model. In 2009, Guinness World Records cited her as the most awarded female act of all time. Houston was one of the world’s best-selling music artists, having sold over 200 million records worldwide. She released six […]

Antoni Tàpies (1923 - 2012)

The son of Josep Tàpies i Mestre and Maria Puig i Guerra, Antoni Tàpies Puig was born in Barcelona on December 13, 1923. His father was a lawyer and Catalan nationalist who served briefly with the Republican government. At 17, Tàpies suffered a near-fatal heart attack caused by tuberculosis. He spent two years as a […]

Florence Green (1901 - 2012)

Florence Green was born at Edmonton, London to Frederick and Sarah (nėe Neal) Patterson. She joined the Women’s Royal Air Force in September 1918 at the age of 17, where she served as an officers’ mess steward. She worked in the officers’ mess at RAF Marham and was also based at Narborough airfield.  She moved […]

Ben Gazzara (1930 - 2012)

Ben Gazzara Gazzara was born in New York City, the son of Italian immigrants Angelina (née Cusumano) and Antonio Gazzarra, a laborer and carpenter. Both Gazzara’s parents were of Sicilian origin, Angelina from Castrofilippo and Antonio from Canicattì, both in the province of Agrigento. Gazzara grew up in New York’s Kips Bay neighborhood; he lived […]

Angelo Dundee (1921 - 2012)

Angelo Dundee Born in Philadelphia of Italian descent, Dundee went to New York and later to Miami where he learned many of the strategies of a boxer’s cornerman while acting as a “bucket man” to the great trainers of Stillman’s Gym. There, his mentors included Charlie Goldman, Ray Arcel and Chickie Ferrera. Later, his brother […]

Mike Kelley (1954 - 2012)

Kelley was born in Wayne, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit, to a working class Roman Catholic family in October 1954. His father was in charge of maintenance for a public school system; his mother was a cook in the executive dining room at Ford Motor Company. In his early years he was involved with the […]

Don Cornelius (1936 - 2012)

Don Cornelius Cornelius was born on Chicago’s South Side on September 27, 1936, and raised in the Bronzeville neighborhood. Following his graduation from DuSable High School in 1954, he joined the United States Marine Corps and served 18 months in Korea. He worked at various jobs following his stint in the military, including selling tires, […]

Wisława Szymborska (1923 - 2012)

Wisława Szymborska was born on 2 July 1923 in Prowent, Poland (now part of Kórnik, Poland), the daughter of Wincenty and Anna (née Rottermund) Szymborski. Her father was at that time the steward of Count Władysław Zamoyski, a Polish patriot and charitable patron. After the death of Count Zamoyski in 1924, her family moved to […]

Camilla Williams (1919 - 2012)

On October 18, 1919, Camilla Ella Williams was born in Danville, Virginia, to Fannie Carey Williams and Cornelius Booker Williams, who worked as a chauffeur. She was the youngest of four children (Mary, Helen, and Cornelius).  “My grandparents and parents were self-taught musicians; all of them sang, and there was always music in our home.” […]

Dorothea Tanning (1910 - 2012)

Dorothea Tanning was born and raised in Galesburg, Illinois. After attending Knox College for two years (1928–30), she moved to Chicago in 1930 and then to New York in 1935. There she supported herself as a commercial artist while pursuing her own painting, and discovered Surrealism at the Museum of Modern Art’s seminal 1936 exhibition, […]

James Farentino (1938 - 2012)

James Farentino Born in Brooklyn, New York, Farentino attended local schools followed later by studying drama and acting in Catholic school.  In the 1950s/60s, he went on to stage and a few TV roles. Among his many television appearances, he guest-starred in 1964 with Efrem Zimbalist, Jr., in the episode “Super-Star” of the CBS drama […]

Eiko Ishioka (1938 - 2012)

Ishioka was born in Tokyo to a commercial graphic designer father and a housewife mother. Although her father encouraged her interest in art as a child, he discouraged her ambition to follow him into the business. She graduated from the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music.  Eiko began her career with the advertising […]

Etta James (1938 - 2012)

Etta James Jamesetta Hawkins was born on January 25, 1938, in Los Angeles, California, to Dorothy Hawkins, who was only 14 at the time. Her father has never been identified. James speculated that he was the pool player Rudolf “Minnesota Fats” Wanderone, and met him briefly in 1987. Due to her mother’s frequent absences from […]

Johnny Otis (1921 - 2012)

Johnny Otis Otis was born to Greek immigrants Alexander J. Veliotes, a Mare Island longshoreman and grocery store owner, and his wife, the former Irene Kiskakes, a painter. He had a younger sister, Dorothy, and a younger brother, Nicholas A. Veliotes, former U.S. Ambassador to both Jordan (1978–1981) and Egypt (1984–1986)). He grew up in […]

Eve Arnold (1912 - 2012)

Eve Arnold was born Eve Cohen in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the middle of nine children born to immigrant Russian-Jewish parents, William Cohen (born Velvel Sklarski), a rabbi, and his wife, Bessie (Bosya Laschiner). Her interest in photography began in 1946 while working in a New York City photo-finishing plant. Over six weeks in 1948, she learned […]

Joanne Borgella (1982 - 2014)

Joanne Borgella Joanne Borgella (May 29, 1982 – October 18, 2014) was an American singer and model. She was signed to Wilhelmina Models in New York City, Miami and LA. She was the first winner of Mo’Nique’s Fat Chance pageant as “Miss F.A.T.” in 2005 and a top 24 contestant on the seventh season of […]

Oscar de la Renta (1932 - 2014)

Oscar de la Renta Born on July 22, 1932, Oscar de la Renta was raised alongside six sisters in a middle-class household in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. At the age of 18, he left the Caribbean island to study painting at the Academy of San Fernando in Madrid. While in Spain, he dreamed of becoming […]