John Joseph O'Connor (January 15, 1920 – May 3, 2000) was an American prelate of the Catholic Church. He served as Archbishop of New York from 1984 until his death in 2000, and was made a cardinal in 1985. He previously served as a U.S. Navy chaplain (1952–1979, including four years as Chief, auxiliary bishop of the Military Vicariate of the United States (1979–1983), and Bishop of Scranton in Pennsylvania (1983–1984).
James Maitland Stewart (May 20, 1908 – July 2, 1997) was an American actor and military officer. Known for his distinctive drawl and everyman screen persona, Stewart's film career spanned 80 films from 1935 to 1991. With the strong morality, which he portrayed both on and off the screen, he epitomized the "American ideal" in the mid-twentieth century. In 1999, the American Film Institute (AFI) ranked him third on its list of the greatest American male actors. He received numerous honors including the AFI Life Achievement Award in 1980, the Kennedy Center Honor in 1983, as well as the Academy Honorary Award and Presidential Medal of Freedom, both in 1985.
Born and raised in Indiana, Pennsylvania, Stewart started acting while at Princeton University. After graduating, he began a career as a stage actor making his Broadway debut in the play Carry Nation (1932). He landed his first supporting role in The Murder Man (1935) and had his breakthrough in Frank Capra's ensemble comedy You Can't Take It with You (1938). Stewart went on to receive the Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance in George Cukor romantic comedy The Philadelphia Story (1940). His other Oscar-nominated roles were in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), It's a Wonderful Life (1946), Harvey (1950) and Anatomy of a Murder (1959).
Stewart played darker, more morally ambiguous characters in movies directed by Anthony Mann, including Winchester '73 (1950), The Glenn Miller Story (1954), and The Naked Spur (1953), and by Alfred Hitchcock in Rope (1948), Rear Window (1954), The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956), and Vertigo (1958). Stewart also starred in The Greatest Show on Earth (1952), The Spirit of St. Louis (1957), The Flight of the Phoenix (1965) as well as the Western films How the West Was Won (1962), The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962), and Cheyenne Autumn (1964).
He enlisted in the U.S. Army Air Forces during World War II, deputy commanding the 2nd Bombardment Wing and commanding the 703d Bombardment Squadron from 1941 to 1947. He later transferred to the Air Force Reserve, and held various command positions until his retirement in 1968 as a brigadier general. Stewart remained unmarried until his 40s and was dubbed "The Great American Bachelor" by the press. In 1949, he married former model Gloria Hatrick McLean. They had twin daughters, and he adopted her two sons from her previous marriage. The marriage lasted until McLean's death in 1994, and Stewart died of a pulmonary embolism three years later.
Renée Lynn Fleming (born February 14, 1959) is an American soprano, known for performances in opera, concerts, recordings, theater, film, and at major public occasions. A recipient of the National Medal of Arts, Fleming has been nominated for 18 Grammy Awards and has won five times. In June 2023, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts announced that Fleming would be one of the five artists recognized at the 2023 Kennedy Center Honors, which she received in December 2023. Other notable honors won by Fleming have included the Crystal Award from the World Economic Forum in Davos, the Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur from the French government, Germany's Cross of the Order of Merit, Sweden's Polar Music Prize and honorary membership in England's Royal Academy of Music. Unusual among artists whose careers began in opera, Fleming has achieved name recognition beyond the classical music world. In May, 2023, Fleming was appointed by the World Health Organization as a Goodwill Ambassador for Arts and Health.Fleming has a full lyric soprano voice. She has performed coloratura, lyric, and lighter spinto soprano operatic roles in Italian, German, French, Czech, and Russian, aside from her native English. A significant portion of her career has been the performance of new music, including world premieres of operas, concert pieces, and songs composed for her by André Previn, Caroline Shaw, Kevin Puts, Anders Hillborg, Nico Muhly, Henri Dutilleux, Brad Mehldau, and Wayne Shorter. In 2008, Fleming became the first woman in the 125-year history of the Metropolitan Opera to solo headline a season opening night gala. Conductor Sir Georg Solti said of Fleming: "In my long life, I have met maybe two sopranos with this quality of singing; the other was Renata Tebaldi."Beyond opera, Fleming has sung and recorded lieder, chansons, jazz, musical theatre, and indie rock, and she has performed with a wide range of artists, including Luciano Pavarotti, Lou Reed, Wynton Marsalis, Paul Simon, Andrea Bocelli, Sting and John Prine. A 2018 Tony Award nominee, Fleming has acted on Broadway and in theatrical productions in London, Los Angeles and Chicago. Fleming has also recorded songs for the soundtracks of several major films, two of which won the Academy Award for Best Picture (The Shape of Water and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King). Fleming has made numerous television appearances, and she is the only classical singer to have performed the U.S. National Anthem at the Super Bowl.
Fleming has also become a frequent public speaker about the impact of music on health and neuroscience, winning a Research!America Award for her advocacy in this field.
Christian Boehmer Anfinsen Jr. (March 26, 1916 – May 14, 1995) was an American biochemist. He shared the 1972 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Stanford Moore and William Howard Stein for work on ribonuclease, especially concerning the connection between the amino acid sequence and the biologically active conformation (see Anfinsen's dogma).
Charles Stowe Myers FIDSA (December 7, 1906 – August 6, 1995) was an American industrial designer.
Captain George Francis Kosco (1 April 1908 – 11 June 1985) was a United States Navy aerologist and polar explorer.
Kosco was born in Ramsaytown, Pennsylvania, on 1 April 1908. He was a Slovak American: his father had come from Oľšov, and his mother from Plavnica. His family name had been "Kvasnak", but this was changed to "Kosco" when his parents emigrated to the United States. Kosco graduated from the United States Naval Academy in 1930, and earned a master's degree in weather aerology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1940. His dissertation, co-authored with John O. F. Dorsett, was called Winter weather types of the eastern North Pacific and adjacent coastal and island areas.Kosco spent much of the 1930s hurricane hunting in the Caribbean. In 1939 he married Bernadette Howley (1912–2013); the couple had three children. Bob Drury and Tom Clavin describe him as a "handsome, athletic six-footer", while Buckner F. Melton Jr. calls him "a slightly stout moon-faced officer".Kosco was assigned to Admiral William Halsey Jr.'s Third Fleet in early October 1944. In December, the fleet was struck by Typhoon Cobra, which destroyed three ships. Kosco, aboard the USS New Jersey, reported a "tropical disturbance" 600 miles (970 km) to the east, and moving away from the fleet, when in fact it was a full-blown typhoon 200 miles (320 km) away and coming towards the fleet. Kosco later admitted to a board of inquiry that he had underestimated Cobra's strength, "basing his prediction on historical data about regional storms rather than relying upon current local observations." He was "mildly reprimanded". In 1967, Kosco published an account of the incident coauthored with Hans Christian Adamson: Halsey's Typhoons: A Firsthand Account of How Two Typhoons, More Powerful than the Japanese, Dealt Death and Destruction to Admiral Halsey's Third Fleet.Kosco was present at the signing ceremony of the Japanese surrender on the USS Missouri at Tokyo Bay on 2 September 1945. He took what is believed to be the only color film footage of the ceremony. This was only released publicly in 2010.In 1946 Kosco participated in Operation Nanook in the Arctic. He was then chief aerologist and chief scientist in Operation Highjump in the Antarctic with Rear Admiral Richard E. Byrd Jr. in 1946–47. He also led several other polar expeditions, collecting specimens for the Smithsonian Institution. Kosco Glacier in Antarctica was named in his honor in 1962.Kosco retired from the Navy in 1960. He died on 11 June 1985 at Bethesda Naval Hospital, and was buried at Arlington National Cemetery.
Howard C. Bare (November 23, 1911 — July 13, 2002) was an attorney. He was the mayor of Lancaster, Pennsylvania for eight months from 1950 to 1951 during the period when his brother Kendig C. Bare, elected mayor in 1950, was in military service in the Korean War.
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.
Martin Albert "Butch" Kottler (May 1, 1910 – June 10, 1989) was an American football running back in the National Football League (NFL). He was a charter member of the Pittsburgh Pirates (which would later be renamed the Steelers).
Kottler was born in Carnegie, Pennsylvania to Martin and Christine (Eichner) Kottler. He attended Centre College in Danville, Kentucky where he starred on the football team and was a member of the Phi Kappa Tau fraternity.He joined the newly formed Pittsburgh Pirates in 1933. In the club's second game, on September 27, 1933, he scored the first touchdown in franchise history for on a 99-yard interception return. This would stand as the longest interception return in franchise history until Super Bowl XLIII in 2009, when James Harrison returned an interception 100 yards.
During World War II and the Korean War, Kottler served in the United States Army Air Corps. He achieved the rank of captain before leaving the service in 1953. He then embarked on a long career in the auto industry, including many years as an executive at Avis. He was married to Bernice Mary Saunders and the couple had a daughter, Cheryl. He died following a long illness in 1989 at the age of 79.
The Evans Family had a vaudeville family dance act in the mid-1900s. The Evans were the only complete American family in a war zone during World War II in the course of their performance tours of US military bases. The Evans family continued touring the US through 1960, playing engagements in all major cities and making television appearances.