Curly Putman (1930 - 2016)

Claude “Curly” Putman, Jr. (November 20, 1930 – October 30, 2016) was an American songwriter, based in Nashville. Born in Princeton, Jackson County, Alabama, his biggest success was “Green, Green Grass of Home” (1964, sung by Porter Wagoner), which was covered by Roger Miller, Elvis Presley, Kenny Rogers, Don Williams, Burl Ives, Johnny Darrell, Gram […]

Paul Huff (1918 - 1994)

Paul Huff joined the Army from his birth city of Cleveland, Tennessee in June 1941, and by February 8, 1944 was serving as a Corporal in the 509th Parachute Infantry Battalion. On that day, near Carano, Italy, Huff led a reconnaissance patrol while under heavy fire from German forces. For his actions during the patrol, […]

Desmond Doss (1919 - 2006)

Desmond Doss was born in Lynchburg, Virginia, son of William Thomas Doss, a carpenter, and Bertha E. (Oliver) Doss. Enlisting voluntarily in April 1942, Doss refused to kill an enemy soldier or carry a weapon (pistol) into combat because of his personal beliefs as a Seventh-day Adventist. He consequently became a medic, and while serving in […]

George Benedict (1826 - 1907)

George Benedict was born on 10 December 1826 in Burlington, Vermont. He entered the University of Vermont and graduated with honors in 1847, receiving the degree of Master of Arts in 1850. While a student he became a member of the Sigma Phi Society as well as the Phi Beta Kappa honor society. He was […]

Chester Bender (1914 - 1996)

Chester Bender was born in Burnsville, West Virginia and later moved with his parents John I. Bender and Inez Harbert Bender, to Plant City, Florida in 1925. In 1936, he became the first Florida resident to graduate from the United States Coast Guard Academy in New London, Connecticut. During his time at the Academy, he […]

James Bell (1856 - 1919)

James Bell was born to John Wilson and Sarah Margaret Venable (Allen) Bell in Shelbyville, Kentucky. His mother died when he was young. Thereafter, two most important women in his life were the black woman who looked after him as a child and the white woman who became his step mother. During the Civil War, Shelby […]

Julie Bovasso (1930 - 1991)

Julie Bovasso was born in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, New York, the daughter of Angela Mary (Padovani) and Bernard Michael Bovasso, a teamster. She was of Italian descent. She attended The High School of Music & Art in Manhattan. Bovasso appeared in many films, including Saturday Night Fever (1977) as John Travolta’s mother, and repeated the role in […]

Conrad Hall (1926 - 2003)

Born in Papeete, Tahiti, French Polynesia, Conrad Hall was the son of writer James Norman Hall and Sarah (Lala) Winchester Hall, who was part-Polynesian. Hall attended the University of Southern California, intending to study journalism, but drifted instead to the university’s cinema school, from which he graduated in 1949. He worked on documentaries, in television […]

Sven Nykvist (1922 - 2006)

Sven Nykvist was born in Moheda, Kronobergs län, Sweden. His parents were Lutheran missionaries who spent most of their lives in the Belgian Congo, so Nykvist was raised by relatives in Sweden and saw his parents rarely. His father was a keen amateur photographer of African wildlife, whose activities may have sparked Nykvist’s interest in […]

Haskell Wexler (1922 - 2015)

Haskell Wexler was born to a Jewish family in Chicago in 1922. His parents were Simon and Lottie Wexler, whose children included Jerrold, Joyce (Isaacs) and Yale. He attended the progressive Francis Parker School, where he was best friends with Barney Rosset. After a year of college at the University of California, Berkeley and a tour […]

Gary Graver (1938 - 2006)

Gary Graver (July 20, 1938 – November 16, 2006) was an American film director and cinematographer. He was a prolific film-maker but is best known as Orson Welles’ final cinematographer. Under the pseudonym of Robert McCallum he also directed adult films. Graver was born and raised in Portland, Oregon. In high school, he produced and starred […]

Vilmos Zsigmond (1930 - 2016)

Vilmos Zsigmond was born in Szeged, Hungary, the son of Bozena (née Illichman), an administrator, and Vilmos Zsigmond, a celebrated soccer player and coach. He studied cinema at the Academy of Drama and Film in Budapest. He received an MA in cinematography. He worked for five years in a Budapest feature film studio becoming “director […]

Simone Schaller (1912 - 2016)

Simone Schaller was born in Manchester, Connecticut, to a Swiss father and an Italian mother. Her family left Connecticut when Simone was seven and moved to Monrovia, California, because of her father’s asthma. She had one brother, born in Manchester, and two sisters, one born in Manchester and the other in California. Her father, originally […]

Patricia Scott (1929 - 2016)

Patricia Scott [“Pat”] (July 14, 1929 – October 19, 2016) was a pitcher who played in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League for parts of four seasons spanning 1948-1953. Listed at 5 ft 7 in (1.70 m), 155 lb., she batted and threw right-handed. A solid finesse pitcher, Patricia Scott had one of the best overhand […]

Tommy Bartlett (1914 - 1998)

Born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Tommy Bartlett began his career in entertainment by becoming a broadcaster at radio station WISN at the young age of 13. After moving to Chicago, Illinois, he became a staff announcer at the CBS-owned WBBM radio station. He continued here until the outbreak of World War II, when he learned to […]

Arthur Shawcross (1945 - 2008)

Arthur Shawcross was born in Kittery, Maine, the first of four children of Arthur Roy Shawcross and Elizabeth (née Yerakes) Shawcross. His family moved to Watertown in New York State when he was young. While several later tests showed Shawcross’ intelligence to be sub-normal or even “borderline retarded”, he received As and Bs in his […]

Paul Reid (1957 - 2013)

At Captain D’s on Lebanon Road in Donelson, Tennessee, on the morning of February 16, 1997, Paul Reid entered the store before opening, under the guise of applying for a job. Once inside, he forced employee Sarah Jackson, 16, and the manager, Steve Hampton, 25, into the restaurant’s cooler. Reid forced the two to lie […]

David Parker Ray (1939 - 2002)

During his childhood, David Parker Ray lived with his grandfather. However, he still saw his father and was physically abused by him. At Mountainair High School, in Mountainair, New Mexico, he was also bullied by his peers for his shyness around girls, and he started abusing alcohol and other drugs as a teenager. As a […]

Thetus Sims (1852 - 1939)

Thetus Sims was born on April 25, 1852 near Waynesboro, Tennessee in Wayne County son of George Washington and Sarah Jane Whitson Sims. He attended a private school at Martin Mills and moved with his parents to Savannah, Tennessee in Hardin County in 1862 during the Civil War. Thetus Sims attended Savannah (Tennessee) College and graduated […]

James Taylor (1880 - 1939)

James Willis Taylor (August 28, 1880 – November 14, 1939) was a U.S. Representative from Tennessee. James Taylor was born near Lead Mine Bend in Union County, Tennessee, Taylor was the son of James W. and Sarah Elizabeth (Rogers) Taylor. He attended the public schools, Holbrook Normal College, Fountain City, Tennessee, and the American Temperance University, […]

Guy Carawan (1927 - 2015)

Guy Carawan was born in California in 1927, to Southern parents. His mother, from Charleston, South Carolina, was the resident poet at Winthrop College (now Winthrop University) in Rock Hill, South Carolina, and his father, a veteran of World War I from North Carolina, worked as an asbestos contractor. He earned a bachelor’s degree in […]

Zilphia Horton (1910 - 1956)

Zilphia Horton (April 14, 1910 – April 11, 1956) was an American musician, community organizer, educator, Civil Rights activist, and folklorist. She is best known for her work with her husband Myles Horton at the Highlander Folk School where she is generally credited with turning such songs as “We Shall Overcome”, “Keep Your Eyes on […]

Myles Horton (1905 - 1990)

A poor white man from Savannah in West Tennessee, Horton’s social and political views were strongly influenced by theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, under whom he studied at the Union Theological Seminary in New York City. Along with educator Don West and Methodist minister James A. Dombrowski of New Orleans, Horton founded the Highlander Folk School (now […]

Carl Hatch (1889 - 1963)

Carl Atwood Hatch (November 27, 1889 – September 15, 1963) was a Democratic Party politician from New Mexico who represented New Mexico in the United States Senate from 1933 until 1949, and was later a United States federal judge. Hatch was born in Kirwin, Kansas, and attended public schools in Kansas and Oklahoma. In 1912 he […]

Oren Harris (1903 - 1997)

Born in Belton in Hempstead County near Hope, Arkansas, Oren Harris attended public schools in Prescott in Nevada County. In 1929, he graduated from Henderson State College in Arkadelphia, Arkansas. Thereafter in 1930, he completed law school at Cumberland University in Lebanon, Tennessee. He was admitted to the bar in 1930 and commenced practice in […]

Cale Rice (1872 - 1943)

Cale Rice (December 7, 1872 – January 24, 1943) was an American poet and dramatist. He was born in Dixon, Kentucky, to Laban Marchbanks Rice, a Confederate veteran and tobacco merchant, and his wife Martha Lacy. He was a younger brother of Laban Lacy Rice, a noted educator. Cale Rice grew up in Evansville, Indiana, and […]

George E. Allen (1896 - 1973)

George E. Allen was born in Booneville, Mississippi. He earned a law degree at Cumberland University in Tennessee. Allen was the head football coach for Cumberland College Bulldogs in Lebanon, Tennessee, for one game in 1916. Cumberland University suffered the greatest loss in the history of college football to Georgia Tech by a score of 222 […]

Thomas Fugate (1899 - 1980)

Thomas Fugate was born on April 10, 1899, on a farm near Tazewell, in Claiborne County, Tennessee. He attended public schools before pursuing higher education at the University of Tennessee and Lincoln Memorial University. In 1918, he married Lillian Rowlett, a union that produced five children. Soon after, Fugate moved his family to Ewing, Virginia, […]

Robert Shulman (1954 - 2006)

Robert Shulman (March 28, 1954 – April 13, 2006) was an American serial killer. Shulman, a postal worker from Hicksville, New York on Long Island, was convicted of murdering five prostitutes between 1991 and 1996, the year when he was arrested. Looking for the murder site, a detective canvassing hotels heard about a man driving a […]

Paul Stephani (1944 - 1998)

Paul Stephani’s crimes began after dark, on New Year’s Eve 1980. He viciously beat Karen Potack with a tire iron and raped her, while she was walking home from a New Year’s party in Prescott, Wisconsin. Potack had been beaten so badly that her throat looked as if it had been slit open with a […]