John Scopes (1900 - 1970)

John Scopes was born in 1900 on a farm in Paducah, Kentucky where he was reared before moving to Danville, Illinois as a teenager. In 1917 he moved to Salem, Illinois where he was a member of the class of 1919 at Salem High School. He attended the University of Illinois for a short time […]

Charles Lindbergh (1902 - 1974)

Charles Augustus Lindbergh (February 4, 1902 – August 26, 1974), nicknamed Slim, Lucky Lindy, and The Lone Eagle, was an American aviator, author, inventor, military officer, explorer, and social activist. In 1927, at the age of 25, Charles Lindbergh emerged from virtual obscurity as a U.S. Air Mail pilot to instantaneous world fame as the […]

Mick Mannock (1887 - 1918)

Edward Corringham “Mick” Mannock VC, DSO & Two Bars, MC & Bar (24 May 1887 – 26 July 1918) was a British flying ace in the Royal Flying Corps and in the Royal Air Force during the First World War. Mannock was a pioneer of fighter aircraft tactics in aerial warfare. At his death he […]

George Richey (1935 - 2010)

George Richey (November 30, 1935 – July 31, 2010), born George Baker Richardson, was an American songwriter and record producer. He was born in Arkansas, but raised in Malden, Missouri. Richey was married to country legend singer/songwriter Tammy Wynette from 1978 until her death in 1998. They had no children. He married Dallas Cowboys cheerleader turned […]

David Houston (1935 - 1993)

David Houston was born in Bossier City in northwestern Louisiana. He was a descendant of Sam Houston, the first president of the Republic of Texas and Confederate General Robert E. Lee. His godfather was 1920s pop singer Gene Austin, no relation to Stephen F. Austin, another founder of Texas. Like Austin, Houston lived briefly as […]

Max Barnes (1936 - 2004)

Max Duane Barnes (July 24, 1936 – January 11, 2004) was a country music singer and songwriter. As a songwriter, Barnes composed many familiar songs of the 1980s and 1990s, receiving 42 songwriter awards in his career. Artists like George Jones (“Who’s Gonna Fill Their Shoes”), Waylon Jennings (“Drinkin’ and Dreamin’”), Conway Twitty (“Red Neckin’ Love […]

Billy Sherrill (1936 - 2015)

Billy Sherrill In 1962, Billy Sherrill moved to Nashville, where he was initially hired by Sam Phillips to manage the Nashville studios of Sun Records. When Sun sold its Nashville studio the following year, Sherrill moved to Epic Records, as an in-house producer. Given his limited exposure to country music up to that point, his […]

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 […]