Today is the birthday
… of Esther Williams, 90. When the national AAU 100 meter freestyle champion found out the 1940 Olympics were cancelled because of the war, she went to Hollywood.
… of The Shark, Jerry Tarkanian. The coach is 81 today.
… of Dustin Hoffman, 74 today. Hoffman has been nominated for the Oscar for Best Actor in a Leading Role seven times, winning for Kramer vs. Kramer and Rain Man. Dustin Lee Hoffman is his actual name.
… of Concetta Rosalie Ann Ingoglia, known as Connie Stevens. She’s 73 today.
… of John Renbourn, 67.
… of Larry Wilcox, 64 today. That’s CHiPs officer Jon Baker.
… of Ralph Malph of Happy Days. Don Most is 58.
… of The Edge, 50 today. His given name is David Howell Evans.
… of Roger Federer, 30.
… of the magnificently endowed John Holmes, born 67 years ago today. He died in 1988.
… of Randy Shilts, author of And the Band Played On, a history of the early years of AIDS, born 60 years ago today. He died in 1994.
… of Marjorie Rawlings, born on this date in 1896. She won the Pulitzer Prize for her novel The Yearling.
… of Emiliano Zapata, born on this date in 1879. “There have been men who, dying, have become stronger. I can think of many of them — Benito Juárez, Abraham Lincoln, Jesus Christ — Perhaps it might be that way with me.”
Arthur J. Goldberg was born on this date in 1908. Goldberg was appointed to the Supreme Court by President Kennedy in 1962. He subsequently made one of the great sacrifices for his country:
Three years after Goldberg took his seat on the Supreme Court, President Lyndon Johnson asked him to step down and accept an appointment as the United States Ambassador to the United Nations. At first, Goldberg declined the offer, but after much prodding by Johnson, he finally accepted. Goldberg’s change of mind was prompted by his sense of duty to the country during the war in Vietnam. He said, “I thought I could persuade Johnson that we were fighting the wrong war in the wrong place, [and] to get out…. I would have loved to have stayed on the Court, but my sense of priorities was [that] this war would be disastrous” (Stebenne, 348). On July 26, 1965, Goldberg assumed the responsibilities of Ambassador to the UN.
The ambassadorship proved frustrating for Goldberg, involving many confrontations with Johnson concerning the war in Vietnam. Goldberg came to believe that he could affect American foreign policy better as a private citizen than through a governmental position, and on April 23, 1968, he resigned from the ambassadorship. He returned to the practice of law in New York City from 1968 to 1971 with the firm of Paul, Weiss, Goldberg, Rifkind, Wharton, & Garrison.
[Source: The Supreme Court Papers of Arthur J. Goldberg, Northwestern University School of Law]
Goldberg died in 1990. He is buried in Arlington Cemetery near his friend, Chief Justice Earl Warren.
Academy Award winning actress Patricia Neal died a year ago today.