Category: Birthdays

Individuals born on this date with an emphasis on American history and culture, including pop culture.

Tycoon

John D. Rockefeller was born on this date in 1839. The world’s first billionaire, Rockefeller essentially retired from Standard Oil in 1911. Even so, his taxable income in 1918 was $33,000,000 and his personal worth was estimated at more than $800,000,000. By then, he had already donated about $500 million to charitable causes.

When Rockefeller died at age 97 in 1937 The New York Times obituary had extensive details, including this:

He believed in conserving his strength. After he was 34 he made it a practice to take a nap of an hour or two after luncheon every day and frequently took three or four afternoons away from his office for golf or puttering around his country estate, laying out roads and paths and planting trees. He never bustled and never was excited. He used to say that after he had established himself he could hardly be called “diligent in business” in the copybook sense and that he was only a fifth wheel in the Standard Oil organization.

Mr. Rockefeller took up golf in 1899 and played it constantly thereafter. It was his sole exercise in his later years. When well past 80 he played a good nine holes in 41 to 45, and was delighted when he defeated an opponent or when his side won in a foursome.

On his eighty-second birthday he played a round of golf with his physician and lifelong friend, Dr. H. F. Biggar of Cleveland, also 82, and planned a game of golf for his 100th birthday.

He played the game all the year round on his private links at Pocantico Hills and at Ormond Beach, Fla. In his eighties he sometimes played on hot Summer days with an attendant following him around to hold an umbrella over his head to protect him from the sun.

Early in 1928 he cut his daily course from eight holes to six at Ormond Beach, remarking that eight holes was too much for a man of 88 and that it was better to play a good game for six holes than to be a dub for eight.

Ron Chernow has written a recent highly-regarded biography, Titan.

David McCullough

Historian and author David McCullough is 73 today. His works include some of the best—and best-selling—biographies ever, Truman and John Adams, and the more recent miliary history 1776.

NewMexiKen thought this excerpt from an interview McCullough did with NEH Chairman Bruce Cole was interesting:

McCullough: There are certain books that I like very much. Reveille in Washington. I love Barbara Tuchman’s work, particularly The Proud Tower. Paul Horgan’s biography of Archbishop Lamy is a masterpiece. Wallace Stegner’s book on John Wesley Powell I’m fond of.

I like some of the present-day people: Robert Caro’s first volume on Lyndon Johnson was brilliant. I care for some of the best of the Civil War writing: Shelby Foote, for example, and Bruce Catton’s The Stillness at Appomattox. It was Catton’s Stillness at Appomattox that started me reading about the Civil War, and then on to people like Tuchman and others. There is a wonderful book called The Reason Why, about the Charge of the Light Brigade–and biographies–Henri Troyat’s Tolstoy, for example.

I work very hard on the writing, writing and rewriting and trying to weed out the lumber. I’m very aware how many distractions the reader has in life today, how many good reasons there are to put the book down. To hold the reader’s attention, you have to bring the person who’s reading the book inside the experience of the time: What was it like to have been alive then? What were these people like as human beings?

When I did Truman, I had no idea what woods I was venturing into. Had I known it was going to take me ten years, I never would have done it. In retrospect, I’m delighted now that I didn’t know.

I love all sides of the work but that doesn’t mean it isn’t hard. There have been times when a book was taking year after year—not with this one so much, but with The Path Between the Seas—when I’d come down to Washington to do research in the National Archives, hoping I wouldn’t find anything new because it could set me back another year or two.

By the same token, to open up a box of the death certificates kept by the French at the hospital in Ancon, at Panama City and to read the personal details of those who died—their names, their age, where they came from, height, color of eyes—was a connection with the reality of them, the mortal tale of that undertaking, that one can never find by doing the conventional kind of research with microfilm or Xeroxed copies.

McCullough also says this: “You stand in front of one of those great paintings or you pick up Samuel Johnson’s essays or Francis Parkman’s works on the French and Indian War, and it’s humbling. But it also is affirming in the sense that you realize that you’re working in a great tradition.”

Leroy Robert Paige

Stachel PaigeBaseball Hall of Fame pitcher Satchel Paige was born 100 years ago today. A huge star in the Negro Leagues, Paige began pitching in 1926 and was the oldest major league rookie ever when he joined the Cleveland Indians at age 42. Paige pitched in his last major league game in 1965 (at age 59).

In the barnstorming days, he pitched perhaps 2,500 games, completed 55 no-hitters and performed before crowds estimated at 10 million persons in the United States, the Caribbean and Central America. He once started 29 games in one month in Bismarck, N.D., and he said later that he won 104 of the 105 games he pitched in 1934.

By the time Jackie Robinson signed with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947 as the first black player in the majors, Mr. Paige was past 40. But Bill Veeck, the impresario of the Cleveland club, signed him to a contract the following summer, and he promptly drew crowds of 72,000 in his first game and 78,000 in his third game. (The New York Times)

Paige first published his Rules for Staying Young in 1953. This version is from his autobiography published in 1962, Maybe I’ll Pitch Forever.

  1. Avoid fried meats which angry up the blood.
  2. If your stomach disputes you, lie down and pacify it with cool thoughts.
  3. Keep the juices flowing by jangling around gently as you move.
  4. Go very light on the vices, such as carrying on in society — the social ramble ain’t restful.
  5. Avoid running at all times.
  6. And don’t look back — something might be gaining on you.

It’s the birthday

… of President Bush, six-oh today.

… of Sylvester Enzio Stallone, also 60 today. Stallone is one of three people to be nominated for a writing Oscar and an acting Oscar for the same movie. The others are Chaplin and Welles.

… of Nancy Reagan (85), Merv Griffin (81) and William Schallert, Patty Duke’s TV father, (84).

… of Ned Beatty. Beatty, who is 69 today, was nominated for the supporting actor Oscar for Network.

Bill Haley (“Rock Around the Clock”) was born on this date in 1925; he died in 1981.

The Mexican artist Frida Kahlo was born on this date in 1907 [she claimed 1910]. Ms. Kahlo died in 1954.

It’s the birthday

… of actress Gloria Stuart, 96 today. She was Rose in Titanic and has appeared in more than 70 film and televison roles since 1932. She was nominated for a supporting Oscar for playing Rose. (Kate Winslet was nominated for a lead Oscar for playing the same character.)

… of Oscar winner Eva Marie Saint. She won the best supporting actress Oscar for On the Waterfront. She’s 82.

… of Marvin Neil Simon. Simon has received four Oscar best screenplay nominations — The Odd Couple, The Sunshine Boys, The Goodbye Girl and California Suite. He did win a Golden Globe for The Goodbye Girl.

… of Bill Withers. Someone in his family can be singing about “Grandpa’s Hands” now; he’s 68.

… of Zuzu Bailey. She’s 66. You know, ZuZu, the one with the petals, played by Karolyn Grimes in It’s a Wonderful Life. “Look, Daddy. Teacher says every time a bell rings, an angel gets his wings.”

The Second of July

It’s the date on which the Continental Congress approved a resolution declaring independence (1776) — the Declaration of Independence stating the reasons was approved two days later.

It’s the date on which the second day of battle was fought at Gettysburg (1863).

It’s the date on which Charles J. Guiteau assassinated President James A. Garfield (1881).

It’s the date on which Thurgood Marshall was born (1908).

It’s the date on which Amelia Earhart was lost (1937).

It’s the date on which the Air Force says a weather balloon crashed near Roswell, New Mexico (1947).

It’s the date on which Ernest Hemingway committed suicide at his home in Ketchum, Idaho (1961).

It’s the date on which President Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act (1964).

It’s the day Richard Petty turns 69.

It’s the day Luci Baines Johnson, the younger daughter of President Lyndon Johnson, turns 59.

Larry David turns 59 today as well.

Lindsay Lohan is 20.

It’s the birthday

… of Olivia de Havilland, 90 today. Miss de Havilland was nominated for an acting Oscar five times, winning for To Each His Own and The Heiress. She lost the best supporting actress Oscar for Gone With the Wind to Hattie McDaniel.

… of Jamie Farr. Cpl. Klinger is 72.

… of Famous Amos. Wally Amos is 70.

… of Deborah Harry of Blondie. She’s 61.

… of Dan Aykroyd. Louis Winthorpe III is 54. Aykroyd was nominated for the best supporting actor Oscar for Driving Miss Daisy.

Diana, Princess of Wales, would have been 45 today.

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

… was born on this date in 1900. In January 2003 Outside Magazine listed its 25 essential books for the well-read explorer. At the top was Antoine de Saint-Exupéry:

Like his most famous creation, The Little Prince, that visitor from Asteroid B-612 who once saw 44 sunsets in a single day, Saint-Exupéry disappeared into the sky. Killed in World War II at age 44, “Saint Ex” was a pioneering pilot for Aéropostale in the 1920s, carrying mail over the deadly Sahara on the Toulouse-Dakar route, encountering cyclones, marauding Moors, and lonely nights: “So in the heart of the desert, on the naked rind of the planet, in an isolation like that of the beginnings of the world, we built a village of men. Sitting in the flickering light of the candles on this kerchief of sand, on this village square, we waited out the night.” Whatever his skills as a pilot—said to be extraordinary—as a writer he is effortlessly sublime. Wind, Sand and Stars is so humane, so poetic, you underline sentences: “It is another of the miraculous things about mankind that there is no pain nor passion that does not radiate to the ends of the earth. Let a man in a garret but burn with enough intensity and he will set fire to the world.” Saint-Exupéry did just that. No writer before or since has distilled the sheer spirit of adventure so beautifully. True, in his excitement he can be righteous, almost irksome—like someone who’s just gotten religion. But that youthful excess is part of his charm. Philosophical yet gritty, sincere yet never earnest, utterly devoid of the postmodern cop-outs of cynicism, sarcasm, and spite, Saint-Exupéry’s prose is a lot like the bracing gusts of fresh air that greet him in his open cockpit. He shows us what it’s like to be subject—and king—of infinite space.

Jack Dempsey

… was born on this date in 1895 in Manassa, Colorado, which makes him about the most famous native-son of the San Luis Valley. As Red Smith wrote in Dempsey’s obituary for The New York Times in 1983:

Jack Dempsey was one of the last of a dwindling company whose exploits distinguished the 1920’s as ”the golden age of sports.” His contemporaries were Babe Ruth in baseball, Red Grange and the Four Horsemen of Notre Dame in football, Bobby Jones and Walter Hagen in golf, Bill Tilden, Helen Wills Moody and Suzanne Lenglen in tennis, Johnny Weissmuller and Gertrude Ederle in swimming, Paavo Nurmi in track, Man o’ War, the racehorse, and Earl Sande, the jockey. But none of the others enjoyed more lasting popularity than the man who ruled boxing between 1919 and 1926.

The obituary is worth reading.

It’s the birthday

… of Justice Clarence Thomas. He’s 58.

… of American Idol’s Randy Jackson. He’s 50.

… of Oscar-winner Frances McDormand. She’s 49. Miss McDormand has had three Oscar nominations for best supporting actress in addition to her winning best actress performance in Fargo.

Choreographer Bob Fosse was born on this date in 1927.

According to many sources, Killer Angels author Michael Shaara was born on this date in 1929. According to his biography at son Jeff Shaara’s web site, the father was born in 1928. The Killer Angels, which won the Pulitzer Prize and is regarded by many as the best Civil War novel, “was rejected by the first fifteen publishers who saw the manuscript.”

It’s the birthday

… of Ralph Waite. Papa Walton is 78.

… of Meryl Streep. The 13-time Oscar nominee is 57. She has been nominated ten times for leading actress, winning for Sophie’s Choice, and three times for supporting actress, winning for Kramer vs. Kramer. She’s been married nearly 28 years and has four children.

… of Graham Greene. He’s 54. Greene was nominated for the best supporting actor Oscar for Dances with Wolves.

… of Cyndi Lauper. A girl of 53, just wanting to have fun.

… of Dan Brown. The author of The Da Vinci Code is 42. The book has sold an estimated 60 million copies.

He must have been early

Jane Russell

Meredith Baxter and Michael Gross, the wife and husband on the TV sitcom Family Ties, are both 59 today. Alex, their son on the show, was played by Michael J. Fox, who was 45 on June 9th.

Jane Russell is 85 today. She was 36D when she made The Outlaw for Howard Hughes. He discovered her at his dentist, where she was a receptionist.

Juliette Lewis is 33 today. She was 18 when she played the daughter in Cape Fear, and received a best supporting actress Oscar nomination.

Chet Atkins

… was born on this date in 1924. He died of lung cancer in 2001.

Few guitarists have had more influence on the instrument than Chet Atkins. In Atkins’ case, his influence extends from the country-music realm into rock and roll, as well. As a studio musician, he appeared on records by Elvis Presley, the Everly Brothers, Hank Williams, Roy Orbison, and countless country musicians. Atkins’ thumb-and-fingerpicking style influenced George Harrison, Duane Eddy, the Ventures, Eddie Cochran, Eric Clapton and Mark Knopfler, as well as innumerable country pickers. Even the likes of Ted Nugent has credited Atkins with inspiring him to take up the instrument. ”I think he influenced everybody who picked up a guitar,” said Duane Eddy. (Rock and Roll Hall of Fame)

It’s the birthday

… of Olympia Dukakis. She’s 75. Miss Dukakis won the Oscar for best supporting actress for Moonstruck.

… of Danny Aiello. He’s 73. Mr. Aiello was nominated for the best supporting actor Oscar for Do The Right Thing.

… of John Mahoney. This retired Seattle cop, the father of two psychiatrists, is 66. You know, Frasier’s dad, Martin Crane.

… of Brian Wilson; he’s 64. Perhaps the greatest American composer of popular music of the past 40+ years, Wilson is an inductee into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as the self-destructive, yet creative genius behind the Beach Boys.

… of Bob Vila. He’s 60, so it’s not just “This Old House” that’s old anymore.

… of John Goodman. Goodman has been nominated for eight Emmys without a victory. He did win a Golden Globe for playing Roseanne’s husband Dan.

… of Nicole Kidman. She’s 39. Nominated for best actress twice, Miss Kidman won the Oscar for The Hours.

It’s the birthday

… of Gena Rowlands. She’s 70. Miss Rowlands has been nominated for the best actress Oscar twice — Gloria (1980) and A Woman Under the Influence (1974).

… of Phylicia Rashad. Clair Hanks Huxtable is 58.

… of Kathleen Turner. She’s 52. Miss Turner was nominated for the best actress Oscar for Peggy Sue Got Married (1986).

… of Paula Abdul. She’s 44. A former Lakers cheerleader, Miss Abdul had six number one records 1988-1991. She topped the charts for 15 weeks altogether.

Lou Gehrig was born on this date in 1903.

Lou Gehrig teamed with Babe Ruth to form baseball’s most devastating hitting tandem ever. “The Iron Horse” had 13 consecutive seasons with both 100 runs scored and 100 RBI, averaging 139 runs and 148 RBI; set an American League mark with 184 RBI in 1931; hit a record 23 grand slams; and won the 1934 Triple Crown. His .361 batting average in seven World Series led the Yankees to six titles. A true gentleman and a tragic figure, Gehrig’s consecutive games played streak ended at 2,130 when he was felled by a disease that later carried his own name. (National Baseball Hall of Fame)

Gehrig died in 1941. As Christopher Moltisanti of The Sopranos put it, “You ever think what a coincidence it is that Lou Gehrig died of Lou Gehrig’s disease?”

When I’m 64

When I get older losing my hair,
Many years from now.
Will you still be sending me a Valentine,
Birthday greetings, bottle of wine.

If I’d been out till quarter to three,
Would you lock the door.
Will you still need me, will you still feed me,
When I’m sixty-four.

You’ll be older too,
And if you say the word,
I could stay with you.

I could be handy, mending a fuse,
When your lights have gone.
You can knit a sweater by the fireside,
Sunday mornings go for a ride.

Doing the garden, digging the weeds,
Who could ask for more.
Will you still need me, will you still feed me,
When I’m sixty-four.

Every summer we can rent a cottage,
In the Isle of Wight, if it’s not too dear.
We shall scrimp and save.
Grandchildren on your knee,
Vera, Chuck and Dave.

Send me a postcard, drop me a line,
Stating point of view.
Indicate precisely what you mean to say
Yours sincerely, wasting away.

Give me your answer, fill in a form
Mine for evermore.
Will you still need me, will you still feed me,
When I’m sixty-four.

Sir Paul McCartney is 64 today. He wrote the song as a teenager with his own father in mind. It was released on the album “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” in 1967.

It’s the birthday

… of novelist Joyce Carol Oates. She’s 68.

She is one of the most prolific writers of her generation, having published almost one hundred books in forty years, including novels, short stories, plays, poetry and essays. She’s the author of many novels, including Them (1969), Bellefleur (1980), and We Were the Mulvaneys (1996).
…

When asked how she can write so much, Oates says she just works steadily, about eight or ten hours a day. She spends a lot of her time thinking about her work while she’s running, walking, or bicycling. She said, “At such times the imagination floats free, and one can contemplate one’s work with an almost magical detachment.”

The Writer’s Almanac

… of Lamont Dozier, 65 today. Who is Lamont Dozier you say? Along with Eddie and Brian Holland, Dozier wrote a few songs you may know, among them:

Baby I Need Your Loving
Baby Love
Bernadette
Come See About Me
Nowhere To Run
I Hear a Symphony
My World Is Empty Without You
Reach Out, I’ll Be There
How Sweet It Is To Be Loved By You
(Sugar Pie, Honey Bunch) I Can’t Help Myself
Stop! In The Name Of Love
This Old Heart Of Mine
It’s The Same Old Song
Jimmy Mack

… of Roberto Duran. “No mas” is 55. (In a 1980 fight with Sugar Ray Leonard, with 16 seconds remaining in the 8th round, Duran had enough. He told the referee, “No mas, no mas.”)

… of Phil Mickelson. Lefty is 36 today.

And, it was on this date in 1904 that Leopold Bloom took his epic journey through Dublin in James Joyce’s Ulysses. Happy Bloomsday.

It’s the birthday

… of Jim Belushi. He’s 52. Think Ron Howard’s brother if Ron Howard had died of a drug overdose.

… of Julie Hagerty. Airplane’s flight attendant is 51.

… of Oscar-winner Helen Hunt. (Hard to believe, but true.) At 43, Tami Maida’s quarterbacking days are over.

… of Courteney Cox Arquette, now 42.

… of Ice Cube. O’Shea Jackson is 37.

… and it’s the birthday of Doogie. Neil Patrick Harris is 33.

The Olsen twins

… are 40 today.

John-Boy Walton is 55. That’s actor Richard Thomas.

The voice of Buzz Lightyear is 53. That’s Tim Allen.

Ally Sheedy is 44. She was 23 when she made St. Elmo’s Fire.