Today is the birthday
… of three-time Oscar nominee for best actress Eleanor Parker. She’s 86.
… of Derek Jeter, 34.
… of Michael Vick, 28.
Author Walter Farley was born on June 26, 1916.
He grew up loving horses and went on to write the novel The Black Stallion (1941). It’s the story of a boy and a wild stallion who survive a shipwreck and become friends on a deserted island. The book was so popular that Farley went on to write twenty novels about the horse, including The Black Stallion Returns (1945), The Black Stallion Revolts (1953), and The Black Stallion’s Ghost (1969).
NewMexiKen’s favorite was always The Island Stallion.
Mildred (Babe) Didrikson Zaharias was born on June 26, 1914. Ms. Zaharias was named the top female athlete of the first half of the 20th century. She excelled in track and field, then took up golf at age 21, often hitting more than 1,000 golf balls a day as she learned the game. Eventually she won every important championship. Babe Zaharias died of cancer at age 42.
Pearl Buck was born on June 26, 1892. Ms. Buck won the Noble Prize for literature in 1938 “for her rich and truly epic descriptions of peasant life in China and for her biographical masterpieces.” This is an excerpt from The Writer’s Almanac:
On the ship to America she started writing a new novel called East Wind, West Wind, which was published in 1930 and became a small success. The following year, she published The Good Earth (1931), about a Chinese peasant who becomes a wealthy landowner. At the time, Westerners saw China as one of the most exotic places on earth. Pearl Buck was the first writer to portray the ordinary lives of Chinese people for a Western audience. The novel won the Pulitzer Prize for literature and became an international best seller.