Paige Palmer (January 17, 1916 - November 21, 2009) [1] was a pioneer American fitness and exercise expert, author, columnist, writer, model, television personality, and entrepreneur.
Palmer was born Dorothy C. Rohrer and raised in Akron, Ohio. She was the hostess of the first daily televised fitness-oriented television show in the United States. The Paige Palmer Show ran on WEWS-TV, Cleveland, Ohio from 1948 to 1973. She is sometimes referred to as the "First Lady Of Fitness". [2] Palmer also designed exercise equipment and fashions for women.
Palmer wrote numerous travel guides, and was also the first person in the world to interview the Dalai Lama after he came out of Tibet. Palmer was honored by the United States Congress for her efforts in "improving the quality of life for American Women." This honor was recorded in the Congressional Record . [3]
Palmer was inducted into the Ohio Women's Hall of Fame in 2000.
Akron is a city in and the county seat of Summit County, Ohio, United States. At the 2020 census, the city proper had a total population of 190,469, making it the fifth-most populous city in Ohio and 136th-most populous city in the United States. The Akron metropolitan area, covering Summit and Portage counties, had a population of 702,219. It is located on the western edge of the Glaciated Allegheny Plateau in Northeast Ohio about 40 miles (64 km) south of downtown Cleveland.
WEWS-TV is a television station in Cleveland, Ohio, United States, affiliated with ABC. It has been owned by the E. W. Scripps Company since its inception in 1946, making it one of three stations that have been built and signed on by Scripps. WEWS-TV's studios are located on Euclid Avenue in Downtown Cleveland, and its transmitter is located in suburban Parma.
Elaine Jill Paige is an English singer and actress, best known for her work in musical theatre. Raised in Barnet, Hertfordshire, Paige attended the Aida Foster Theatre School, making her first professional appearance on stage in 1964, at the age of 16. Her appearance in the 1968 production of Hair marked her West End debut.
Betty Marion Ludden was an American actress and comedian. A pioneer of early television with a career spanning almost seven decades, she was noted for her vast number of television appearances acting in sitcoms, sketch comedy, and game shows. She produced and starred in the series Life with Elizabeth (1953–1955), thus becoming the first woman to produce a sitcom.
Melina Eleni Kanakaredes Constantinides is an American actress. She is widely known for her roles in U.S. primetime television dramas as Dr. Sydney Hansen in Providence (1999–2002), as Detective Stella Bonasera in CSI: NY (2004–2010), and on the American daytime television drama series Guiding Light as Eleni Andros Cooper (1991–1995).
Stephanie Tubbs Jones was an American politician who served as the U.S. representative for Ohio's 11th congressional district from 1999 until her death in 2008. A member of the Democratic Party, her district encompassed most of Downtown and Eastern Cleveland and many of the eastern suburbs in Cuyahoga County, including Euclid, Cleveland Heights and Shaker Heights. She was the first African American woman to be elected to Congress from Ohio.
Alexandra Leigh LaForce is an American journalist, model and beauty queen who won Miss Teen USA 2005. She is a reporter for TNT Sports, covering the NBA on TNT. She was previously the lead reporter for SEC college football games, a courtside reporter for college basketball games, and the host of We Need to Talk on the CBS Sports Network. LaForce also worked as a broadcast sports anchor and reporter for the Cleveland, Ohio, FOX affiliate WJW. She won a 2011 Emmy award for anchoring FOX 8's Friday Night Touchdown high school football show. She was Miss Teen USA in 2005, and played college basketball at Ohio University.
Denise Austin is an American fitness instructor, author, and columnist, and a former member of the President's Council on Physical Fitness and Sports.
Florence Agnes Henderson was an American actress. With a career spanning six decades, she is best known for her starring role as Carol Brady on the ABC sitcom The Brady Bunch. Henderson also appeared in film, as well as on stage, and hosted several long-running cooking and variety shows over the years. She appeared as a guest on many scripted and unscripted television programs and as a panelist on numerous game shows. She was a contestant on Dancing with the Stars in 2010.
Yvette Nicole Brown is an American actress. She starred as Shirley Bennett on the NBC sitcom Community, as Dani in the 2015 reboot of The Odd Couple on CBS, and as Dina Rose on the ABC sitcom The Mayor. Brown had a recurring role as Helen Dubois in Drake & Josh, and has had guest roles in television shows such as That '70s Show, The Office, Boston Legal, Chuck, The Soul Man, Mom, and Big Shot. In 2021, she received a Primetime Emmy Award nomination for her role in A Black Lady Sketch Show.
Dorothy Fuldheim was an American journalist and anchor who spent the majority of her career at The Cleveland Press and WEWS-TV, both based in Cleveland, Ohio.
Renee Powell is an American professional golfer who played on the US-based LPGA Tour and is currently head professional at her family's Clearview Golf Club in East Canton, Ohio. She was the second African-American woman ever to play on the LPGA Tour.
Jemma Sara Palmer is an English businesswoman, television personality, model and former professional wrestler. She is best known by the name Inferno, which she used in the 2008 British television series Gladiators. She mainly worked on the British independent circuit during her professional wrestling career, with a brief stint at WWE, where she was assigned to their development territory Florida Championship Wrestling (FCW). She also appeared on the twelfth season of the UK version of Big Brother.
Regina Brett is an American author, inspirational speaker, podcaster and newspaper columnist currently writing for The Cleveland Jewish News. Her columns are syndicated through Jewish News Service. Brett launched the podcast Little Detours with Regina Brett in 2020.
Lizzie Lape was a mid-Ohio madam who owned and operated multiple bordellos at the end of the 19th century and early into the 20th.
Grace Goulder Izant (1893–1984) was an Ohio writer and historian who wrote for the Plain Dealer Magazine and published several books on Ohio history. She was the first Ohioan ever honored by the American Association for State and Local History, which recognized her work in 1962. She won the Cleveland Arts Prize for Literature in 1965 and was inducted into the Ohio Women's Hall of Fame in 1982.
Marilyn Szalay (1950-2012) was a contemporary figurative realist painter and draftsperson. Best known for her oversized charcoal drawings of humans and animals, her aesthetic came from journalistic photography and her work relies on strong draftsmanship and powerful compositions with great psychological depth. Hellen Cullinan of the Cleveland Plain Dealer said of Szalay's work, "Powerfully expressive gestural and facial closeup details reflect Szalay's command of behavioral and physical characteristics."
Shirley Aley Campbell was a figurative realist painter, called "Cleveland’s own artistic blend of Alice Neel and Lucien Freud".
On March 10, 2021, Marcia Fudge resigned her seat in the United States House of Representatives after being confirmed by the United States Senate to serve as the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development in the Biden administration. Governor Mike DeWine set the primary date for August 3, concurrent with the special election in Ohio's 15th congressional district. The general election was on November 2. Shontel Brown won both the competitive Democratic primary and the general election, and was sworn in on November 4.
Carolyn Presutti is a Voice of America (VOA) senior television correspondent based in Washington, DC.