Novella Nelson (1939 - 2017)

Novella Christine Nelson (December 17, 1938 – September 1, 2017) was an American actress and singer. She established her career as a singer, both on the off-Broadway and Broadway stage and in cabaret-style locales. Nelson was born in Brooklyn, New York on December 17, 1938. Novella Nelson was born to James and Evelyn (formerly Hines) Nelson in […]

Jackie Burkett (1936 - 2017)

Jackie Burkett accepted a scholarship from Auburn University, where he was a two-way player, playing center and linebacker, while also calling the defensive signals. He was named a starter as a sophomore and was a part of a team that won the SEC and the National championship. That squad was led by its defense, which registered […]

Paul Schaal (1943 - 2017)

Paul Schaal (March 3, 1943 – September 1, 2017) was an American professional baseball player who played 11 seasons for the Los Angeles / California Angels and Kansas City Royals of Major League Baseball. Paul Schaal became the Angels regular third baseman in his rookie season in 1965. He quickly established himself as a slick fielding […]

Rudolph Hass (1892 - 1952)

After reading a magazine article illustrating an avocado tree with dollar bills hanging from it in 1925, Rudolph Hass used all the money he had, plus a loan from his sister, Ida Hass, to buy a small acre and a half avocado grove at 430 West Road La Habra Heights, California. The trees were old […]

Alex Hawkins (1937 - 2017)

From 1956-58, Alex Hawkins starred collegiately for South Carolina, rushing for 1,491 yards and being voted 1958’s Atlantic Coast Conference player of the year. He was the 13th player selected in the 1959 NFL Draft. As a rookie, Hawkins was a member of the Baltimore team that won the 1959 NFL Championship Game, defeating the New […]

Frank Vincent (1937 - 2017)

Skilled at the drums, piano and trumpet, Frank Vincent originally aspired to a career in music, but turned to acting in 1976, when he co-starred in the low-budget gangster movie The Death Collector along with Joe Pesci, where they were spotted by Robert De Niro. De Niro told Martin Scorsese about both Vincent and Pesci; […]

Harry Stanton (1926 - 2017)

Harry Stanton appeared in indie and cult films (Two-Lane Blacktop, Cockfighter, Escape from New York, Repo Man), as well as many mainstream Hollywood productions, including Cool Hand Luke, The Godfather Part II, Alien, Red Dawn, Alpha Dog, Pretty in Pink, Stephen King’s Christine and The Green Mile. He was a favorite actor of Sam Peckinpah, […]

Harvey Milk (1930 - 1978)

Harvey Bernard Milk (May 22, 1930 – November 27, 1978) was an American politician and the first openly gay elected official in the history of California, where he was elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. Despite being the most pro-LGBT politician in the United States at the time, politics and activism were not […]

Harry Benjamin (1885 - 1986)

In 1948, in San Francisco, Harry Benjamin was asked by Alfred Kinsey, a fellow sexologist, to see a child who “wanted to become a girl” despite being born male; the mother wished for help that would assist rather than thwart the child. Kinsey had encountered the child as a result of his interviews for Sexual […]

David Reimer (1965 - 2004)

David Reimer was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba. He was originally named Bruce, and his identical twin was named Brian. At the age of six months, after concern was raised about how both of them urinated, the boys were diagnosed with phimosis. They were referred for circumcision at the age of seven months. On April 27, […]

John Money (1921 - 2006)

Born in Morrinsville, New Zealand, to a family of English and Welsh descent, John Money initially studied psychology at Victoria University of Wellington, graduating with a double master’s degree in psychology and education in 1944. John Money was a junior member of the psychology faculty at the University of Otago in Dunedin, but in 1947, […]

Evelyn Hooker (1907 - 1996)

Evelyn Hooker was born Evelyn Gentry in North Platte, Nebraska, in her grandmother’s house and grew up with eight brothers and sisters in the Colorado Plains. When she was 13, her family moved to Sterling, Colorado. The journey to Sterling would be one of Evelyn’s fondest memories. Evelyn’s mother, Jessie Bethel, who had a third grade […]

Steve Endean (1948 - 1993)

Stephen Robert “Steve” Endean (August 6, 1948 – August 4, 1993) was an early gay rights activist, first in Minnesota, then nationally. He was born in Davenport, Iowa, and came to Minnesota to attend the University of Minnesota from 1968-1972, majoring in political science. In 1971, Endean founded the Minnesota Committee for Gay Rights (later Gay Rights […]

Blake Brockington (1996 - 2015)

Blake Brockington was born on May 14, 1996 in Charleston, South Carolina. He moved from Charleston to Charlotte, North Carolina, when he was 12. Brockington was assigned the sex of female at birth and identified as such publicly until he came out publicly as transgender while attending East Mecklenburg High School as a tenth grade student. […]

Joseph Beam (1954 - 1988)

Baptised as a Catholic, the young Joseph Beam studied mainly in parochial schools, including the Malvern Preparatory School, St. Thomas More High School and Franklin College, a small liberal arts college founded by American Baptists in Franklin, Indiana (20 miles south of Indianapolis). An only child, his boyhood was difficult and solitary; he was often […]

Edith Windsor (1929 - 2017)

During college, Edith met Saul Windsor. Their relationship ended at one time during the engagement when Windsor fell in love with a female classmate. However, after Windsor decided she did not want to live life as a lesbian, they reconciled and got married after graduation. They divorced less than one year afterward, and she confided […]

Elizabeth Kemp (1951 - 2017)

Elizabeth Kemp was in the original cast of The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, which began at The Actors Studio off-Broadway before it transferred to Broadway and became a long-running smash hit. Her mentor, Elia Kazan, took Tennessee Williams to see Kemp in this production and when Williams was looking for the actress to play […]

Kate Millett (1934 - 2017)

Katherine Murray Millett (September 14, 1934 – September 6, 2017) was an American feminist writer, educator, artist, and activist. She attended Oxford University and was the first American woman to be awarded a degree with first-class honors after studying at St Hilda’s College, Oxford. She has been described as “a seminal influence on second-wave feminism”, […]

Don Williams (1939 - 2017)

After the Pozo-Seco Singers disbanded, Don Williams briefly worked outside the music industry. Soon, however, Williams resumed his career in music. In December 1971, Williams signed on as a songwriter for Jack Clement with Jack Music Inc. In 1972, Williams inked a contract with JMI Records as a solo country artist. His 1974 song, “We […]

Blake Heron (1982 - 2017)

Blake Heron (January 11, 1982 – September 8, 2017) was an American screen actor. He is best known for his starring role as Marty Preston in the 1996 film Shiloh. Blake Heron was born in Sherman Oaks, California on January 11, 1982. After his parents divorced, he moved with his mother to Atlanta, then to […]

John Celardo (1918 - 2012)

After creating sports cartoons for Street & Smith magazines, John Celardo began drawing for comic books, including a job at the Eisner-Iger shop. During the 1940s, he was an assistant art director and a major contributor to the Fiction House line, notably for Wings Comics. Over decades, he did work for a variety of publishers, […]

Joe Orlando (1927 - 1998)

In 1966, Joe Orlando and writer E. Nelson Bridwell created the parody superhero team The Inferior Five in Showcase #62 (June 1966). This lighthearted feature would soon receive its own ongoing series. Orlando launched the Swing with Scooter series with writers Barbara Friedlander and Jack Miller in July 1966. After 16 years of freelancing, Orlando […]

Al Feldstein (1925 - 2014)

Arriving at EC in 1948, Al Feldstein began as an artist, but he soon combined art with writing, eventually editing most of the EC titles. Although he originally wrote and illustrated approximately one story per comic, in addition to doing many covers, Feldstein finally focused on editing and writing, reserving his artwork primarily for covers. […]

George Tuska (1916 - 2009)

George Tuska’s first work for the future Marvel Comics came in 1949, when Marvel’s predecessor company, Timely Comics, was transitioning to its 1950s iteration, Atlas Comics. His first confirmed credit is the seven-page story “Justice Has a Heart” in Casey – Crime Photographer # 1 (Aug. 1949). He quickly went on to draw in an […]

Al Plastino (1921 - 2013)

While working out of a studio in New York City with two other cartoonists in 1948, Al Plastino showed sample art of Superman to DC Comics, which offered him work at $35 a page. Plastino, who had heard that Superman artists were receiving $55 a page, negotiated a $50 rate. Now settled in the comic […]

Otto Binder (1911 - 1974)

Otto Binder entered comics in 1939 on the heels of his artist brother, Jack, who moved to New York to work at the studio of Harry “A” Chesler, one of that era’s “packagers” who provided outsourced content for publishers entering the new medium of comic books. The following year, magazine publisher Fawcett Publications began its […]

Gus Wickie (1885 - 1947)

Gus Wicke was born in Germany and immigrated to the United States with his father, also named August Wicke. He became a U.S. citizen when his father was naturalized before the younger Wicke reached the age of majority. He was living in West New York, New Jersey, when he registered for the World War I […]

Willard Bowsky (1907 - 1944)

Willard Bowsky was born in New Jersey in 1907 into an Italian-German Jewish immigrant family, the second son of Herman Bowsky and Emma L. Bowsky (née Cimiotti), both born in New York City. Herman Bowsky’s parents emigrated from Germany; while Emma’s father was born in Austria of Italian descent and emigrated from there as a […]

Seymour Kneitel (1908 - 1964)

In 1928, Seymour Kneitel returned to Fleischer Studios as an inbetweener, staying there for fourteen years (1928–1942), He was there only about six months when he became an animator, and a year later became a head animator. During his time there he provided animation for many films, including the Betty Boop and Popeye the Sailor […]

Fletcher Henderson (1897 - 1952)

James Fletcher Henderson was born in Cuthbert, Georgia, in 1897. He grew up in a middle-class African-American family. His father, Fletcher H. Henderson Sr. (1857–1943), was the principal of the nearby Howard Normal Randolph School from 1880 until 1942. His home, now known as the Fletcher Henderson House, is a historic site. His mother, a […]