Thursday May 27th, 2021

 

 

Vi and Guy

  Today May 27th is my dad's birthday, born in 1905, he would've been 116 years old. He was forty-six when I was born in 1951. Mom was 42. Dad and I weren't particularly close, owing to our vast age difference I think, but he was a good role model for me, as a person, husband, father, good neighbor, hard worker, public speaker, humorist, and grandfather. As to offering worldly guidance, he simply told me and my three older sisters, "Try to get along with people," in hope of a peaceable resolution to conflict; he never looked down on people different from himself, that I recall. He was compassionate; I remember him weeping at the sight of a photograph of a starving Ethopian child, in the Des Moines Register & Tribune.

• Birthdays in 1905
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• January 3 --Anna May Wong, film actress (died 1961)
• January 7 – James Simpson Jr., race car drive (died 1960)
• January 11 – Dorothy Hale, socialite (suicide 1938)
• February 6 – Merze Tate, African American academic (died 1996)
• March 15 – Nat Perrin, comedy screenwriter (died 1998)
• April 9 – J. William Fulbright, U.S. Senator (died 1995)
• May 15 – Joseph Cotten, actor (died 1994)
• May 16 – Henry Fonda, actor (died 1982)^[4]
• June 20 – Lillian Hellman, playwright (born 1984)^[5]
• July 4 – Irving Johnson, sailor and author (died 1991)
• July 15 – Dorothy Fields, lyricist (died 1974)
• July 21 – David M. Kennedy, U.S. 60th Secretary of Treasury, (died 1996)
• August 23 – Abbie Rowe, White House photographer (died 1967)
• October 5 – John Hoyt, actor, (died 1991)
• October 6 – Helen Wills, tennis player (died 1998)
• October 7 – Andy Devine, character actor (died 1977)
• October 11 – Fred Trump, father of Donald Trump (died 1999)
• November 1 – Eric Siday, bandleader (died 1976)
• November 3 – Joseph H. Ball, U.S. Senator (died 1993)
• November 4 – Nannie Doss, serial killer (died 1965)
• November 13 – Frank Levingston, supercentenarian (died 2016)
• November 19
  • Eleanor Audley, actress (died 1991)
  • Tommy Dorsey, bandleader (died 1956)
• November 26 – Bob Johnson, baseball player (died 1982)
• November 27 – Astrid Allwyn, actress (died 1978)
• December 7 – Leonard Goldenson, television executive (died 1999)
• December 23 – Paul Caraway, general,  (died 1985)
• December 24 – Howard Hughes, business magnate (died 1976}

Deaths

• January 2 – Clara Augusta Jones Trask, novelist (born 1839)
• January 6 --Ann Eliza Smith, patriot (born 1819) George Van Cleaf, swimmer (born 1880)
• January 19 – Benjamin F. Rice, U.S. Senator (born 1828)
• January 22 – Clara Harrison Stranahan, college co-founder (born 1831)
• January 27 – Watson Heston, cartoonist (born 1846)
• February 8 – John Leary, 37th Mayor of Seattle (born 1837)
• February 15 – Lew Wallace, Union general in the American Civil War (born 1827)
• February 20 – Jeremiah W. Farnham, merchant captain (born c. 1828)
• February 27 – George S. Boutwell, U.S. Senator (born 1818)
• March 1 – Edward O. Wolcott, U.S. Senator  (born 1848)
• March 6 – John Henninger Reagan, U.S. Senator (born 1818)
• March 9 – William B. Bate, 23rd Governor of Tennessee (born 1826)
• March 18 – Joseph Roswell Hawley, U.S. Senator (born 1826)
• April 21 – Orville H. Platt, U.S. Senator  (born 1827)
• May 5 – William M. Robbins, U.S. Representative (born 1828)
• May 13 – Sam S. Shubert, theater owner (born 1878)
• May 23 – Mary Livermore, journalist, abolitionist and women's rights advocate (born 1820)
• July 1 – John Hay, author, biographer and 37th United States Secretary of State (born 1838)
• July 24 – Adolf Cluss, engineer architect (born 1825 in Germany)
• August 1 – Andrew Wylie, judge (born 1814)
• August 21 – Mary Mapes Dodge, children's author (b. 1831)
• September 5 – Touch the Clouds, Minneconjou chief (b. c. 1838)
• September 12 – John Rogan, second tallest person in recorded history (b. 1868)
• October 6 – Hibbard H. Shedd, politician and novelist (born 1847)
• December 3 – John Bartlett, lexicographer and publisher (born 1820)