Scott Carpenter (1925 - 2013)

Born in Boulder, Colorado, Carpenter moved to New York City with his parents Marion Scott Carpenter and Florence [née Noxon] Carpenter for the first two years of his life. His father had been awarded a postdoctoral research post at Columbia University. In the summer of 1927, Scott returned to Boulder with his mother, then ill […]

Stanley Kauffmann (1916 - 2013)

Kauffmann started with The New Republic in 1958 and contributed film criticism to that magazine for the next fifty-five years, publishing his last review in 2013. He had one brief break in his New Republic tenure, when he served as the drama critic for the New York Times for eight months in 1966.  He worked […]

Andy Pafko (1921 - 2013)

Pafko grew up in Boyceville, Wisconsin. The small village did not have a baseball team. Pafko was signed as a 19-year-old by the Class D baseball team in nearby Eau Claire. Pafko learned about the interest from team manager Ivy Griffin while working on his father’s farm. “I still remember the day he pulled into […]

Paul Desmarais (1927 - 2013)

Desmarais was born in Sudbury, Ontario to lawyer Jean-Noel Desmarais and Lebea Laforest. The Desmarais family is originally from Quebec and descended from Paul Desmarais who moved to Canada from Saint-Sauveur, France.  Desmarais’ grandfather Noël Desmarais founded the town of Noëlville, Ontario. Desmarais was married to Jacqueline Maranger, also from Sudbury. They had two sons: […]

Ruth Benerito (1916 - 2013)

Ruth Mary Rogan was born and raised in New Orleans. In an age when girls did not usually go on to higher education, her father made sure his daughters received the same education available to boys. She completed high school at age 14 and entered Sophie Newcomb College at age 15, and later Tulane University […]

Tabu Ley Rochereau (1937 - 2013)

Pascal-Emmanuel Sinamoyi Tabu was born in Bagata, in the then Belgian Congo. His musical career took off in 1956 when he sung with Joseph “Le Grand Kallé” Kabasele, and his band L’African Jazz. After finishing high school he joined the band as a full-time musician. Tabu Ley sang in the pan-African hit Indépendance Cha Cha […]

Saul Leiter (1923 - 2013)

Saul Leiter was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His father was a well known Talmud scholar and Saul studied to become a Rabbi. His mother gave him hist first camera at age 12. At age 23, he left theology school and moved to New York City to become an artist. He had developed an early interest […]

Chico Hamilton (1921 - 2013)

Hamilton was born in Los Angeles, California. His brother was the actor Bernie Hamilton.  Hamilton started his career in a band with Charles Mingus, Illinois Jacquet, Ernie Royal, Dexter Gordon, Buddy Collette and Jack Kelso. Engagements with Lionel Hampton, Slim & Slam, T-Bone Walker, Lester Young, Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Charlie Barnet, Billy Eckstine, Nat […]

Peter B. Lewis (1933 - 2013)

Lewis was raised in a Jewish family in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, the oldest of four children born to Helen and Joseph Lewis. His father — who had co-founded a small auto insurance company named Progressive Insurance with Jack Green in 1937 — was grooming Lewis to work at the company when he died at age […]

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 […]