Sergeant Major Huelet Leo "Joe" Benner (November 1, 1917 – December 12, 1999) was an American multi-discipline pistol shooter during what many consider the golden era of international and national competition (post-World War II through the mid-1960s). He was a member of three U.S. Olympic teams (1948, 1952, and 1956).
George Heussenstamm (born July 24, 1926) is an American composer. His most well-known works include jazz-classical chamber styles, such as Etudes (7) for oboe, clarinet & bassoon, Op. 77 (1964), Alchemy for solo oboe and tape, Op. 60 (1976), and Ensembles, for brass quintet (1976). Recordings of his compositions include Woodwind Treasures by the West Wind Quintet and Alchemy: American Works for Oboe and English Horn CD by Mark Hill, and others.Formerly, a professor of music at Cal State Dominguez Hills, Cal State Northridge, Cal State Los Angeles, and other colleges in Southern California. Heussenstamm is the author of several books pertaining to music theory, including The Norton Manual of Music Notation, Hal Leonard Harmony & Theory – Part 1: Diatonic, and Hal Leonard Harmony & Theory – Part 2: Chromatic. The Norton Manual of Music Notation has become a standard of music notation.
George Heussenstamm (b. 1926) received all of his musical training in the Southern California area. Winner of numerous national and international composition competitions, he is a member of ASCAP, is an honorary member of the international music fraternity, Sigma Alpha Iota, and is a former member of the American Society of University Composers (now called SCI) and the International Society for Contemporary Music. He was a member of NACUSA (National Association of Composers, USA), in which he served as Vice- President for many years. In 1976 and 1981 he was the recipient of Fellowship Grants from the National Endowment for the Arts. Eight of his compositions were recorded on LP and six of these have been committed to CD. From 1971 to 1984 he was Manager of the Coleman Chamber Music Association, the oldest continuing chamber music series in the country.
Since 1976 Heussenstamm taught at Cal State Dominguez Hills, Cal State Los Angeles, Ambassador College, and steadily for 17 years at California State University, Northridge, prior to his retirement in June, 2000. Composer of more than 85 published works, he is the author of the book, The Norton Manual of Music Notation, released by W.W. Norton and Co. in March, 1987, and still a mainstay in the literature about the notation of music, making Heussenstamm one of the leading authorities in this field. He has also written a two-volume textbook on tonal harmony, Handbook of Harmony, which was the required harmony textbook at CSUN for several years. It has now been published in two volumes by Hal Leonard Corp. under the title, Hal Leonard Theory and Harmony and is available at book stores everywhere. His Handbook of Tonal Counterpoint, as yet unfinished, is written in a style geared for maximum comprehension by college-level students.
Composing in a wide spectrum of media, George Heussenstamm's compositions have been performed with regularity both here and abroad. He is perhaps best known for his large-scale compositions for saxophone and brass ensembles. His final large work, Moire for strings, is a magnificent work of texture and contemporary string technique and was premiered by the University of Southern California Symphony string section in 1990. In 2016, George became the benefactor of a choral music contest thru the California Choral Directors Association (then ACDA California). George has funded the CCDA/Heussenstamm Choral Composition Competition for a total of ten years. From his generous donations, California composers are able to attend the CCDA Summer Conference at ECCO for free, have the chance to have their winning piece read by the entire conference, and earn a $500 bonus. It is a great way to inspire composers to create new and exciting choral music for the future.
Among his non-academic activities are fishing, pocket billiards, going to concerts, and Scrabble. He was for 17 years the director of a Scrabble club in Glendale, California, and was chosen as Director of the Year in 1991 by the National Scrabble Association. He is an avid follower of national and international affairs, his primary source being BBC World Service over XM satellite radio. Married in 1957, his wife, Mary Heussenstamm (1930-2005), was a locally well-known watercolor portraitist. Her book, Watercolor Portraits Painted on the Streets of Los Angeles, has been widely acclaimed.
Warren A. Miller (October 15, 1924 – January 24, 2018) was an American ski and snowboarding filmmaker. He was the founder of Warren Miller Entertainment and produced, directed and narrated films until 1988. His published works include over 750 sports films, several books and hundreds of non-fiction articles. Miller was inducted into the U.S. Ski Hall of Fame (1978), the Colorado Ski Hall of Fame (1995), and was awarded Lifetime Achievement Awards from the International Skiing History Association (2004) and the California Ski Industry Association (2008).
Betsy Drake (September 11, 1923 – October 27, 2015) was an American actress, writer and psychotherapist. She was the third wife of actor Cary Grant.
Phyllis Reynolds Naylor (born January 4, 1933) is an American writer best known for children's and young adult fiction. Naylor is best known for her children's-novel quartet Shiloh (a 1992 Newbery Medal winner) and for her "Alice" book series, one of the most frequently challenged books of the last decade.
Karel Jan Bossart (February 9, 1904 – August 3, 1975) was an innovative rocket designer and creator of the Atlas ICBM. His achievements rank alongside those of Wernher von Braun and Sergei Korolev. But as most of his work was for the United States Air Force and was therefore classified, his achievements are not widely known.
Claudia Miriam Gonson (born April 5, 1968) is an American musician best known for her work with The Magnetic Fields. She often provides the band lead vocals as well as performing the piano or drums. She is also the band's manager.
Gonson met Stephin Merritt in high school in the early 1980s, and the pair have worked together ever since.
While in high school at Concord Academy, Gonson performed in her first band, the Zinnias, in which Merritt wrote or co-wrote most of the band's material with John Gage. The band broke up when Gonson left to attend Columbia University. Gonson later returned to the Boston area to attend Harvard University, and joined the group Lazy Susan, which also included Therese Bellino and Shirley Simms.She has since performed on many of Merritt's albums, including the critically acclaimed 1999 album 69 Love Songs, and frequently appears with him live as part of the usual quartet that constitutes The Magnetic Fields.
Gonson has been Merritt's longtime manager. She appears extensively in Strange Powers, the 2009 documentary by Kerthy Fix and Gail O'Hara about Merritt and The Magnetic Fields.
As well as her work with Merritt, Gonson also plays drums in the band Tender Trap. She has written and performed her own music with Shirley Simms, Michael Hearst, Tanya Donelly and Rick Moody. She has also played drums in Providence, Rhode Island-based band Honeybunch and performs as the lead vocalist in Merritt's Future Bible Heroes project. She sang on Neil Gaiman's song "Bloody Sunrise".In an interview with The Advocate, Gonson remarked:
"When we started Magnetic Fields we purposely had one lesbian, one gay guy, one straight woman, and one straight man. The audience could identify with whomever they wanted."In that interview, Gonson noted that she feels that Merritt's songs are predominantly about "Loneliness, isolation, and the need to be recognized by another person." She believes that if homophobia were not so prevalent, these experiences "would be less rampant instead of being so associated with the gay personality." Gonson believes that many LGBT youth have listened to The Magnetic Fields for "words of wisdom".
In 2010, Gonson gave birth to her daughter Eve.
Warren Allen Smith (October 27, 1921 – January 9, 2017) was an American writer, humanist and gay rights activist. A World War II veteran and an outspoken atheist, he dubbed himself as "the atheist in a foxhole".
Jason Phillip Bere (born May 26, 1971) is an American former professional baseball pitcher and bullpen coach. He played in Major League Baseball for parts of 11 seasons from 1993 to 2003, for the Chicago White Sox, Cincinnati Reds, Milwaukee Brewers, Chicago Cubs, and Cleveland Indians. He was elected to the 1994 MLB All-Star Game, but injuries limited his playing career. Bere was the Indians' bullpen coach from 2015 to 2017.
William Theodore Katt (born February 16, 1951) is an American actor and musician. He is best known for his starring role as Ralph Hinkley/Hanley on the ABC television series The Greatest American Hero (1981–83).
Katt first became known for playing Tommy Ross, the ill-fated prom date of Carrie White in the original film version of Carrie (1976). He subsequently starred in films such as First Love (1977), Big Wednesday (1978) and Butch and Sundance: The Early Days (1979). Between 1985 and 1988, he starred in nine Perry Mason television films alongside his mother Barbara Hale, who reprised her role as Della Street from the television series Perry Mason.