1931 births

Gilbert "Gib" Ford (September 14, 1931 – January 10, 2017) was an American basketball player and business executive, who competed in the 1956 Summer Olympics as part of the American basketball team, which won the gold medal. Born in Tulia, Texas, he played college basketball at the University of Texas. He worked for thirty-five years at Converse, Inc., ultimately becoming the company's chairman and CEO.
Ford played for Amarillo High School. In 1950 he was a Texas High School All State player and a participant in the Texas High School All Star Game. His name is enshrined in the Texas High School Basketball Hall of Fame. Following High School, Ford played basketball for the University of Texas from 1950 to 1954, and was co-captain of the team his senior year, when the team was a co-champion of the Southwest Conference. He was named to various All-SWC teams and took part in the 1954 Shrine East/West College All Star Game in Kansas City. In 1986, he was inducted into the University of Texas Longhorn Hall of Honor.After graduation from Texas in 1954, where he was also a member of Phi Kappa Psi fraternity, Ford was a starter for the famous Phillips 66 Oilers, which won the National AAU Championship in 1955, and the National Industrial Basketball League Championship in 1955 and 1958. While serving in the Air Force, Ford played on the 1956 All Air Force Team and the All Armed Forces Team, which qualified for the 1956 Olympic trials.
In August 1994, Ford was appointed chairman of the board and CEO of Converse, Inc. He retired December 1, 1996 after 35 years of service with the company. Ford first joined Converse as a member of the sales staff in 1961, and served in a number of executive capacities before becoming president of the company in 1986.
Ford was affiliated with several sporting goods and footwear manufacturers' organizations. He served two terms, 1982–85 and 1991–93, as the chairman of the board of the Sporting Goods Manufacturers Association (SGMA). He was instrumental in creating the industry's first Super Show in 1986, the world's largest sporting goods trade show. He also was a member of the boards of directors of the World Federation of the Sporting Goods Industry, the Two/Ten Foundation, the Footwear Industries of America, the Rubber and Plastic Footwear Manufacturers Association, the New England Sports Hall of Fame, and the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. He served a six-year term as a member of the board of trustees for Gettysburg College in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.

Luis Pércovich Roca (14 July 1931 – 23 April 2017) was a Peruvian politician. Pércovich served as the President of the Congress of the Republic of Peru from July 1981 to July 1982. He served as Prime Minister of Peru from 14 October 1984 to 28 July 1985.

Robert Luther Gauldin Jr. (born 1931) is an American composer. He is professor emeritus of Music Theory at the Eastman School of Music.

Harold Scheub (August 26, 1931 – October 16, 2019) was an American Africanist, Evjue-Bascom Professor of Humanities Emeritus in the Department of African Languages and Literature (now the Department of African Cultural Studies) at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Scheub has recorded and compiled oral literature from across southern Africa.

Mason Lee "Red" Cashion (November 10, 1931 – February 10, 2019) was an American football official for 25 seasons in the National Football League (NFL), where he was the referee for two Super Bowls.

Charles Gene Abrell (August 12, 1931 – June 10, 1951) was a United States Marine Corps corporal who was killed in action during the UN May–June 1951 counteroffensive in the Korean War.
Abrell was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor for his heroic actions and sacrifice of life on June 10, 1951, at Hwacheon, Korea while advancing under fire with his platoon against enemy hill positions. After being wounded twice during a single-handed assault against an enemy bunker, he pulled the pin from a hand grenade and hurled himself into the bunker, killing the enemy gun crew and himself in the explosion.

Ellen Hunnicutt (May 4, 1931 - June 24, 2003) was an American author.

Ruth Miriam Siems (; February 20, 1931 – November 13, 2005) was an American home economist who created Stove Top Stuffing.A native of Evansville, Indiana, Siems graduated from Bosse High School in Evansville and earned a degree in home economics from Purdue University in 1953. She was employed for almost four years in product research and development at the old Igleheart Brothers plant of General Foods in Evansville, working on quality control for angel food cake mixes and researching the Swans Down brand of cake mixes and flours. She developed the stuffing, one of General Foods Corp.'s (now Kraft Foods Inc.) top convenience products, in 1971 while working at the corporation's Tarrytown, New York facility.Her name was the first on a patent application for the product. Her patent was based on a certain size of bread crumb that makes the rehydration, or addition of water, work. In an interview with The Evansville Courier in 1991, Siems said the idea for the instant stuffing came from the marketing department, but it was up to the research and development staff to create the product. The test kitchens, the chefs and all the workers in research and development were given a shot at developing the stuffing, but Siems' idea was the one the company chose. The brand was later acquired by Kraft Foods, which, as of 2005, sells about 60 million boxes of it at Thanksgiving. Some sources say that Siems first sold the recipe to the Mrs Cubbison's corporation, and that later she further developed it for wholesale purposes in the General Foods Kitchen."Everyone always had me pegged as a creative person," she said in a newspaper interview. "I've always liked to put things together."Siems retired from General Foods in 1985 after a 33½-year career. She died from a heart attack at her home in Newburgh, Indiana, on November 13, 2005, at the age of 74. In 2023 Holiday World announced that a new ride set to open in 2024, Good Gravy, pays homage to Siems.

James Freeman Gilbert (August 9, 1931 – August 15, 2014) was an American geophysicist, best known for his work with George E. Backus on inverting geophysical data, and also for his role in establishing an international network of long-period seismometers.Gilbert was born in Vincennes, Indiana. A 1949 graduate of Lawrenceburg High School (Kentucky), his undergraduate and graduate degrees were earned from MIT (B.S., 1953, and Ph.D. in geophysics, 1956), and he continued at MIT as a postdoctoral fellow until 1957, when he moved to the University of California, Los Angeles. At UCLA he was an assistant, then associate, professor, but left to take an appointment as
a senior researcher at Texas Instruments. In 1961, he was recruited by Walter Munk to the Institute of Geophysics and
Planetary Physics (IGPP) at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, also becoming a professor of geophysics at the University of California, San Diego. He remained at UCSD through the remainder of his career, and became an emeritus professor.In his later years, Gilbert enjoyed extensive world travel with his wife, Sally Gilbert. He died due to complications resulting from a car accident in Southern Oregon on August 15, 2014. He was 83 years old.

David Ray Wilkerson (May 19, 1931 – April 27, 2011) was an American Christian evangelist, best known for his book The Cross and the Switchblade. He was the founder of the addiction recovery program Teen Challenge, and founding pastor of the interdenominational Times Square Church in New York City.
Wilkerson emphasized such Christian beliefs as God's holiness and righteousness, God's love toward humans and especially Christian views of Jesus. Wilkerson tried to avoid categorizing Christians into distinct groups according to the denomination to which they belong.