Today is the birthday
… of Ross Perot. He’s 81.
… of Bruce Babbitt. The former Governor of Arizona and Secretary of the Interior is 73.
… of Vera Wang. The designer is 62.
… of Tobey Maguire. Peter Parker is 36.
Robert James Keeshan was born on this date in 1927. He was known as Bob Keeshan, and even better known as Captain Kangaroo. Before that he was know as Clarabell the Clown.
As the easy-going Captain with his big pockets and his bushy mustache, Keeshan lured children into close engagement with literature, science, and especially music, adopting an approach which mixed pleasure and pedagogy. Children learned most easily, he argued, when information and knowledge became a source of delight. Keeshan’s approach represented a rejection of pressures towards the increased commercialization of children’s programming as well as a toning-down of the high volume, slapstick style associated with earlier kid show hosts, such as Pinky Lee, Soupy Sales and Howdy Doody‘s Buffalo Bob.
Jerome Solon Felder was born 86 years ago today. As Doc Pomus he wrote such songs as “A Teenager in Love,” “Save The Last Dance For Me,” “This Magic Moment,” “Can’t Get Used to Losing You,” “Little Sister,” “Suspicion” and “Viva Las Vegas.” He also wrote, though it was radically changed for The Coasters by Leiber and Stoller, “Young Blood.” Pomus died in 1991.
Helen Keller was born on June 27 in 1880. The following is from her obituary in The New York Times when she died in 1968.
For the first 18 months of her life Helen Keller was a normal infant who cooed and cried, learned to recognize the voices of her father and mother and took joy in looking at their faces and at objects about her home. “Then” as she recalled later, “came the illness which closed my eyes and ears and plunged me into the unconsciousness of a newborn baby.”
The illness, perhaps scarlet fever, vanished as quickly as it struck, but it erased not only the child’s vision and hearing but also, as a result, her powers of articulate speech.
Her life thereafter, as a girl and as a woman, became a triumph over crushing adversity and shattering affliction. In time, Miss Keller learned to circumvent her blindness, deafness and muteness; she could “see” and “hear” with exceptional acuity; she even learned to talk passably and to dance in time to a fox trot or a waltz. Her remarkable mind unfolded, and she was in and of the world, a full and happy participant in life.
What set Miss Keller apart was that no similarly afflicted person before had done more than acquire the simplest skills.
But she was graduated from Radcliffe; she became an artful and subtle writer; she led a vigorous life; she developed into a crusading humanitarian who espoused Socialism; and she energized movements that revolutionized help for the blind and the deaf.