Wallace Maynard Cox (December 6, 1924 – February 15, 1973) was an American actor. He began his career as a standup comedian and then became the title character of the popular early U.S. television series Mister Peepers from 1952 to 1955. He also appeared as a character actor in over 20 films and dozens of television episodes. Cox was the voice of the animated canine superhero Underdog of the TV show of the same name.
Donald Vester Fites (born 1934) was the chairman and CEO of Caterpillar, Inc. from 1990 to 1999.
Samuel Lawrence Klusman Parks (December 13, 1914 – April 13, 1975) was an American stage and film actor. His career arced from bit player and supporting roles to top billing, before it virtually ended when he admitted to having been a member of a Communist Party cell, which led to his blacklisting by all Hollywood studios. His best known role was Al Jolson, whom he portrayed in two films: The Jolson Story (1946) and Jolson Sings Again (1949).
Jack Ralph Cole (December 14, 1914 – August 13, 1958) was an American cartoonist best known for birthing the comedic superhero Plastic Man, and his cartoons for Playboy magazine.
He was posthumously inducted into the comic book industry's Jack Kirby Hall of Fame in 1991 and the Will Eisner Award Hall of Fame in 1999.
Mark Willard Clark (born May 12, 1968) is a former right-handed pitcher in Major League Baseball. He pitched all or parts of ten seasons in the majors.
Clark was born in Bath, Illinois, and made his debut on September 6, 1991 for the St. Louis Cardinals. Over the next nine seasons, Clark would develop into a journeyman starting pitcher, being traded from team to team. He pitched in one postseason game in the 1998 National League Division Series for the Chicago Cubs, a game which he lost to John Smoltz and the Atlanta Braves.
He was released by the Texas Rangers during the 2000 season, then retired. He and his wife Amy have two children: a son, Brandon and a daughter, Allyson. They now live in Kilbourne, Illinois. He is now a baseball coach for children in the Kilbourne area.
Randy Shilts (August 8, 1951 – February 17, 1994) was an American journalist and author. After studying journalism at the University of Oregon, Shilts began working as a reporter for both The Advocate and the San Francisco Chronicle, as well as for San Francisco Bay Area television stations. In the 1980s, he was noted for being the first openly gay reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle.His first book, The Mayor of Castro Street: The Life and Times of Harvey Milk, was a biography of LGBT activist Harvey Milk. His second book, And the Band Played On, chronicled the history of the AIDS epidemic. Despite some controversy surrounding the book in the LGBT community, Shilts was praised for his meticulous documentation of an epidemic that was little-understood at the time. It was later made into an HBO film of the same name in 1993. His final book, Conduct Unbecoming: Gays and Lesbians in the US Military from Vietnam to the Persian Gulf, examined discrimination against lesbians and gays in the military.
Shilts garnered several accolades for his work. He was honored with the 1988 Outstanding Author award from the American Society of Journalists and Authors, the 1990 Mather Lectureship at Harvard University, and the 1993 Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists' Association. Diagnosed with HIV in 1985, Shilts died of an AIDS-related illness in 1994 at the age of 42.
Janet Lynn Nowicki (born April 6, 1953) is an American figure skater. She is the 1972 Olympic bronze medalist, a two-time world championships medalist, and a five-time senior Ladies U.S. national champion.
Christie Ann Hefner (born November 8, 1952) is an American businesswoman. She was chairman and CEO of Playboy Enterprises from 1988 to 2009, and is the daughter of Playboy magazine founder Hugh Hefner.
John Stompanato Jr. (October 10, 1925 – April 4, 1958) was a United States Marine and gangster who became a bodyguard and enforcer for gangster Mickey Cohen.
In the mid-1950s, he began an abusive relationship with actress Lana Turner. In 1958, he was stabbed to death by Turner's daughter, Cheryl Crane, who said she did it to defend her mother from a vicious beating by Stompanato. His death was ruled as justifiable homicide because he had been killed in self-defense.
Robert Waltrip Short (September 15, 1924 – March 21, 2005) was an American cabaret singer and pianist, who interpreted songs by popular composers from the first half of the 20th century such as Rodgers and Hart, Cole Porter, Jerome Kern, Harold Arlen, Richard A. Whiting, Vernon Duke, Noël Coward and George and Ira Gershwin.
Short also championed African-American composers of the same period such as Eubie Blake, James P. Johnson, Andy Razaf, Fats Waller, Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn, presenting their work not in a polemical way, but as simply the obvious equal of that of their white contemporaries.
Short's dedication to his great love – what he called the "Great American Song" – left him equally adept at performing the witty lyrics of Bessie Smith's "Gimme a Pigfoot (And a Bottle of Beer)" or Gershwin and Duke's "I Can't Get Started". Short stated his favorite songwriters were Ellington, Arlen and Kern, and he was instrumental in spearheading the construction of the Ellington Memorial in New York City. He was a friend of Tom Jobim and was present during the composer's final days in New York City.