Theodore Roosevelt Jr., often referred to as Teddy or by his initials, T. R., was an American politician, statesman, conservationist, naturalist, and writer who served as the 26th president of the United States from 1901 to 1909. He previously held various positions in New York politics, rising up the ranks to serve as the state's 33rd governor for two years. He later served as the 25th vice president under President William McKinley for six months in 1901, assuming the presidency after McKinley's assassination. As President, Roosevelt emerged as a leader of the Republican Party and became a driving force for anti-trust and Progressive policies.
Ernest Taylor Pyle was a Pulitzer Prize–winning American journalist and war correspondent who is best known for his stories about ordinary American soldiers during World War II. Pyle is also notable for the columns he wrote as a roving human-interest reporter from 1935 through 1941 for the Scripps-Howard newspaper syndicate that earned him wide acclaim for his simple accounts of ordinary people across North America. When the United States entered World War II, he lent the same distinctive, folksy style of his human-interest stories to his wartime reports from the European theater (1942–44) and Pacific theater (1945). Pyle won the Pulitzer Prize in 1944 for his newspaper accounts of "dogface" infantry soldiers from a first-person perspective. He was killed by enemy fire on Iejima during the Battle of Okinawa.
Chautauqua is an adult education and social movement in the United States that peaked in popularity in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Chautauqua assemblies expanded and spread throughout rural America until the mid-1920s. The Chautauqua brought entertainment and culture for the whole community, with speakers, teachers, musicians, showmen, preachers, and specialists of the day. U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt is often quoted as saying that Chautauqua is "the most American thing in America". What he actually said was: "it is a source of positive strength and refreshment of mind and body to come to meet a typical American gathering like this—a gathering that is typically American in that it is typical of America at its best." Several Chautauqua assemblies continue to gather to this day, including the original Chautauqua Institution in Chautauqua, New York.
William Earnest Harwell was an American sportscaster, known for his long career calling play-by-play of Major League Baseball games. For 55 seasons, 42 of them with the Detroit Tigers, Harwell called the action on radio and/or television. In January 2009, the American Sportscasters Association ranked Harwell 16th on its list of Top 50 Sportscasters of All Time.
William Francis Murphy was an American politician, lawyer, and jurist from Michigan. He was a Democrat who was named to the Supreme Court of the United States in 1940 after a political career that included serving as United States Attorney General, 35th Governor of Michigan, and Mayor of Detroit. He also served as the last Governor-General of the Philippines and the first High Commissioner to the Philippines.
Michael Richard Beschloss is an American historian specializing in the United States presidency. He is the author of nine books on the presidency.
The Story of G.I. Joe, also credited in prints as Ernie Pyle's Story of G.I. Joe, is a 1945 American war film directed by William A. Wellman and starring Burgess Meredith and Robert Mitchum. The film was nominated for four Academy Awards, including Mitchum's only career Oscar nomination.
Geoffrey Champion Ward is an American editor, author, historian and writer of scripts for American history documentaries for public television. He is the author or co-author of 19 books, including 10 companion books to the documentaries he has written. He is the winner of seven Emmy Awards.
Isaiah Bowman, AB, Ph. D., was an American geographer and President of the Johns Hopkins University, 1935–1948, controversial for his antisemitism and inaction in Jewish resettlement during WWII.
The lyceum movement in the United States refers to a loose collection of adult education programs named for the classical Lyceum which flourished in the mid-19th century, particularly in the Northeast and Midwest. Some of these organizations lasted until the early 20th century.
Neal Gabler is an American journalist, writer and film critic.
Franklin D. Roosevelt, the 32nd president of the United States from 1933-1945, began experiencing symptoms of a paralytic illness in 1921 when he was 39 years old. His main symptoms were fevers; symmetric, ascending paralysis; facial paralysis; bowel and bladder dysfunction; numbness and hyperesthesia; and a descending pattern of recovery. He was diagnosed with poliomyelitis and underwent years of therapy, including hydrotherapy at Warm Springs, Georgia. Roosevelt remained paralyzed from the waist down and relied on a wheelchair and leg braces for mobility, which he took efforts to conceal in public. In 1938, he founded the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, leading to the development of polio vaccines. Although historical accounts continue to refer to Roosevelt's case as polio, the diagnosis has been questioned in the context of modern medical science, with a competing diagnosis of Guillain–Barré syndrome proposed by some authors.
Kevin Boyle is an American author and the William Smith Mason Professor of American History at Northwestern University. His 2004 book, Arc of Justice: A Saga of Race, Civil Rights, and Murder in the Jazz Age, won the National Book Award.
Bob Hicok is an American poet.
John Herman Henry Sengstacke was an American newspaper publisher and owner of the largest chain of African-American oriented newspapers in the United States. Sengstacke was also a civil rights activist and worked for a strong black press, founding the National Newspaper Publishers Association in 1940, to unify and strengthen African-American owned papers. Sengstacke served seven terms as president of the association, which by the early 21st century had 200 members.
James Wright was an American writer and academic administrator who was the President of Dartmouth College and the Eleazar Wheelock Professor of History at Dartmouth. The 16th President in the Wheelock Succession, he served as Dartmouth president from 1998 until 2009. He joined the Dartmouth History Department in 1969 and served as dean of faculty from 1989 to 1997 and as provost from 1997 to 1998. Wright received a bachelor's degree from the University of Wisconsin–Platteville and a masters and doctoral degree in history from the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He died at his home in Hanover, New Hampshire, on October 10, 2022.
Samuel Albert Levine was an American cardiologist. The Levine scale, Levine's sign and Lown–Ganong–Levine syndrome are named after him. The Samuel Albert Levine Cardiac Unit at Brigham and Women's Hospital is named in his honor.
Captain Henry Thomas Waskow was a United States Army officer, with the rank of captain, memorialized in Ernie Pyle's dispatch "The Death of Captain Waskow," which in turn was faithfully portrayed in the movie The Story of G.I. Joe. The column also publicized the documentary film The Battle of San Pietro, by John Huston, depicting the action in which Waskow died.
Paul Hendrickson is an American author, journalist, and professor. He is a senior lecturer and member of the Department of English at the University of Pennsylvania. He is a former member of the writing staff at the Washington Post.
Lisa Pollak is an American journalist and author. She won the 1997 Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing.
