People from Altoona

Charles Stowe Myers FIDSA (December 7, 1906 – August 6, 1995) was an American industrial designer.

Edwin Walter "Ed" Skinner (February 9, 1936 – January 12, 2015) was an American politician in the state of Iowa.
From Runnells, Iowa, Skinner went to Drake University, University of Iowa, and received his law degree from Drake University Law School. He practiced law in Altoona, Iowa and was the city attorney for the cities of Altoona and Pleasant Hill, Iowa. Skinner was a Democrat who served in the Iowa House of Representatives from 1969 to 1973. He died in Des Moines, Iowa.

John Cornelius Houbolt (April 10, 1919 – April 15, 2014) was an aerospace engineer credited with leading the team behind the lunar orbit rendezvous (LOR) mission mode, a concept that was used to successfully land humans on the Moon and return them to Earth. This flight path was chosen for the Apollo program in July 1962. The critical decision to use LOR was viewed as vital to ensuring that man reached the Moon by the end of the decade as proposed by President John F. Kennedy. In the process, LOR saved time and billions of dollars by efficiently using the rocket and spacecraft technologies.

Janet Blair (born Martha Janet Lafferty; April 23, 1921 – February 19, 2007) was an American big-band singer who later became a popular film and television actress.