Maryland

Rogers_Clark_Ballard_Morton

Rogers Clark Ballard Morton (September 19, 1914 – April 19, 1979) was an American politician who served as the U.S. Secretary of the Interior and Secretary of Commerce during the administrations of presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, respectively. He also served as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Maryland.
Morton was born in Louisville, Kentucky, and moved to a farm on the Eastern Shore of Maryland in the early 1950s. In 1962, he was elected to the House of Representatives, in which capacity he established a pro-environment record. Morton would joke that his two middle initials stood for "Chesapeake Bay". In 1968, Morton played a major role in Richard Nixon's campaign for president, and was chosen by Nixon in 1969 to serve as chairman of the Republican National Committee.
In the elections of 1970, Morton was considered a strong candidate to challenge Joseph Tydings for his U.S. Senate seat from Maryland, but he chose instead to remain as chairman of the RNC. In 1971, President Nixon tapped Morton to serve as Secretary of the Interior, during which time he oversaw the construction of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System and the 1973 oil crisis. Morton was the only person from the East Coast to serve as head of the Interior Department in the 20th century.Following Nixon's resignation due to the Watergate Scandal, Morton continued in his post in the Gerald Ford administration until 1975, when he was nominated to serve as Secretary of Commerce. From April to August 1976, Morton served as Ford's campaign manager in his bid for election. Morton retired from politics following Ford's election defeat. Three years later, he died of cancer at his home in Easton on the eastern shore of Maryland.

Gretchen_Quie

Gretchen Marie Quie (née Hansen; August 4, 1927 – December 13, 2015) was an American artist, painter, potter, writer, and advocate for the arts. Quie served as the First Lady of Minnesota from 1979 until 1983 during the administration of her husband, Governor Al Quie. As First Lady, Quie established the State Ceremonial Building Council to oversee the restoration of the Minnesota Governor's Residence. She also opened the Governor's Mansion to the general public through programs including, "Night at the Mansion," which chose Minnesotans through a lottery to spend the night at the residence. Al and Gretchen Quie invited a family of Vietnamese refugees to live at the Governor's Residence's renovated carriage house to encourage Minnesotans to sponsor more refugees.Her official manuscripts are housed in the collection of the Minnesota Historical Society.

Robert_J._Myers

Robert Julius Myers (October 31, 1912 – February 13, 2010) was an American actuary who co-created the American Social Security program. He also set the retirement age in the United States at 65 years old.Myers was born in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, on October 31, 1912, to parents, Laurence B. Myers and Edith Hirsh Myers. He received his bachelor's degree from Lehigh University.
In 1963 he was elected as a Fellow of the American Statistical Association.Myers died from respiratory failure at his home in Silver Spring, Maryland, at the age of 97.

Rene_Carpenter

Rene Carpenter (April 12, 1928 – July 24, 2020) was an American newspaper columnist and host of two Washington, D.C., television shows.
As the wife of Scott Carpenter, one of the Mercury Seven astronauts, she was a pioneering member of NASA's early spaceflight families.

George_Switzer_(mineralogist)

George Shirley Switzer (June 11, 1915 – March 23, 2008) was an American mineralogist who is credited with starting the Smithsonian Institution's famed National Gem and Mineral Collection by acquiring the Hope Diamond for the museum in 1958. Switzer made the arrangements when renowned New York City jeweler Harry Winston decided to donate the Hope Diamond to the Smithsonian.Switzer was also known for his analysis of Moon rocks which were brought back by NASA missions to the Moon.Today, the National Gem and Mineral Collection at the National Museum of Natural History currently contains more than 15,000 individual gems in the collection, as well as 350,000 minerals and 300,000 samples of rock and ore specimens. Additionally, the Smithsonian's National Gem and Mineral Collection houses approximately 35,000 meteorites, constituting what is considered to be one of the most comprehensive collections of its kind in the world.

Charles_Schnetzler

Charles Carter Schnetzler (June 3, 1930 – December 15, 2009) was a planetary scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. Schnetzler is best known for analyzing Moon rocks brought back by the Apollo program and for studying the Earth's environment using the Landsat and the Earth Observing System. Schnetzler was born in Whiting, Indiana and grew up in Neodesha, Kansas. On November 4, 2009, Schnetzler was seriously injured after being hit by a motorist while walking near his home on Little Patuxent Parkway in Columbia, Maryland. He later died in his home on December 15, 2009.

Cliff_Kincaid

Clifford P. Kincaid Jr., known as Cliff Kincaid (born May 16, 1954), is an author and conservative political activist. He is the director of the Center for Investigative Journalism of Accuracy in Media, an organization which believes much of the American news media is biased toward liberal candidates and policy positions. Kincaid has written for such publications as Human Events.

Thomas_Stewart_(bass-baritone)

Thomas Stewart (August 29, 1928 – September 24, 2006) was an American bass-baritone who sang an unusually wide range of roles, earning global acclaim particularly for his performances in Wagner's operas.
Thomas James Stewart was born in San Saba, Texas. He graduated from Baylor University in 1953 and then went to the Juilliard School, where he studied with Mack Harrell. An imposing six-footer, Stewart made his debut in 1954 as La Roche in the American premiere of Richard Strauss's Capriccio, going on to sing with the New York City Opera and Lyric Opera of Chicago.
He married soprano Evelyn Lear in 1955, and the following year the couple participated in a studio recording of Kurt Weill's Johnny Johnson, first produced in 1936. In May 1957 he created the role of Dioneo in the world premiere of Carlos Chávez's The Visitors. Later that year he and his wife traveled to Berlin on Fulbright Scholarships. In 1958 he made his major-role debut as Escamillo in Bizet's Carmen with the Städtische Opera, now the Deutsche Oper Berlin. He created the role of Jupiter in Giselher Klebe's 1961 opera Alkmene and remained on the Berlin company's roster until 1964. He debuted at the Royal Opera House in 1960, again as Escamillo, and sang frequently at Covent Garden until 1978, with roles including Golaud in Pelléas et Mélisande, Gunther in Götterdämmerung, and the title roles in Don Giovanni and The Flying Dutchman.
A regular at the Bayreuth Festival for 13 years (1960–72), Stewart sang most of Wagner's heroic baritone roles, including Wotan/Wanderer and Gunther in the Ring Cycle, the Dutchman, Wolfram in Tannhäuser, and Amfortas in Parsifal. He sang the latter role for 13 consecutive Bayreuth seasons.
In 1967 Herbert von Karajan launched the Salzburg Easter Festival with a new staging of the Ring Cycle, casting Stewart as Wotan/Wanderer and Gunther during the festival’s first four seasons, and again as Wotan in a later revival of Das Rheingold. Karajan recorded all four operas from the cycle with the Texas baritone, and Time Magazine acclaimed him "the Wotan of his generation."
Stewart made his Metropolitan Opera debut as Ford in Verdi's Falstaff in 1966. Over the next decade he figured in many stage and broadcast performances as the Met's leading Wagner baritone (Wotan/Wanderer, Hans Sachs in Die Meistersinger, Kurwenal in Tristan und Isolde, Amfortas, Wolfram, the Dutchman, Gunther). He also sang a variety of other roles: Golaud, Jochanaan in Salome, Orest in Elektra, Iago in Verdi's Otello, Balstrode in Peter Grimes, the four villains in Contes d'Hoffmann, as well as Mozart's Almaviva and Don Giovanni. He returned to that house annually until 1976, then less regularly but still frequently thereafter; the Met database lists his last season with the house as 1993–94.
With the San Francisco Opera he sang the title role in the American premiere of Aribert Reimann's Lear (1981). At the same house he also sang several French and Italian roles (Golaud, Valentin in Faust, Posa in Don Carlos, both Ford and the title role in Falstaff), as well as major Wagnerian roles (Wotan/Wanderer, Gunther, Wolfram, Kurwenal, Amfortas). He received a medal from that company in 1985 for his 25 years of distinguished performance.
In his prime years Stewart also returned to Lyric Opera of Chicago to sing the Dutchman and Hans Sachs, as well as Orest, Ford, and Mozart's Almaviva. At other houses worldwide, his better-known roles also included Scarpia in Tosca, Renato in Un ballo in maschera, di Luna in Il trovatore, Amonasro in Aida, and the title roles in Rigoletto and Eugene Onegin.
In later years, he and his wife ran the Evelyn Lear and Thomas Stewart Emerging Singers Program of the Wagner Society of Washington, D.C.
Thomas Stewart died of a heart attack while playing golf near his home in Rockville, Maryland, aged 78. He was survived by his two children and his wife, who died in 2012.