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Beverly Sills (Soprano/Chairman of the Metropolitan Opera/Charity Worker) |
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 Beverly Sills (May 25, 1929 – July 2, 2007) was an American operatic soprano between the 1950s and 1970s.
Although she sang a repertoire from Handel and Mozart to Puccini, Massenet, Wagner, and Verdi, she was known for her performances in coloratura soprano roles in live opera and recordings. Sills was largely associated with the operas of Gaetano Donizetti, of which she performed and recorded many roles. Her signature roles include the title role in Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor, the title role in Massenet's Manon, Marie in Donizetti's La Fille du Régiment, the three heroines in Offenbach's Les contes d'Hoffmann, Rosina in Rossini's The Barber of Seville, and Violetta in Verdi's La traviata.
After retiring from singing in 1980, she became the general manager of the New York City Opera. In 1994, she became the Chairman of Lincoln Center and then, in 2002, of the Metropolitan Opera, stepping down in 2005. Sills lent her celebrity to further her charity work for the prevention and treatment of birth defects.
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Toni Morrison (Author/Nobel Prize Winner/Pulitzer Prize Winner) |
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 Toni Morrison (born Chloe Ardelia Wofford[1] on February 18, 1931) is a Nobel Prize and Pulitzer Prize-winning American author, editor, and professor.
Her novels are known for their epic themes, vivid dialogue, and richly detailed black characters. Among her best known novels are The Bluest Eye, Song of Solomon and Beloved.
Toni Morrison was born in Lorain, Ohio to George and Ramah (Willis) Wofford, the second of four children in a working-class family. As a child, Morrison read constantly; among her favorite authors were Jane Austen and Leo Tolstoy.
Morrison's father told her numerous folktales of the black community (a method of storytelling that would later work its way into Morrison's writings).
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Annie Oakley (Sharpshooter/Women's Rights Supporter/First American Female Superstar) |
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 Annie Oakley (August 13, 1860 – November 3, 1926), born Phoebe Ann Mosey, was an American sharpshooter and exhibition shooter. Oakley's amazing talent and timely rise to fame led to a starring role in Buffalo Bill's Wild West show, which propelled her to become the first American female superstar.
Using a .22 caliber rifle at 90 feet Oakley reputedly could split a playing card edge-on and put five or six more holes in it before it touched the ground.
Oakley was born in "a cabin less than two miles northwest of Woodland, now Willowdell, in Darke County", a rural western border county of Ohio. The village of North Star has a road sign stating it is near her place of birth. Her birthplace log cabin site is about five miles eastward of North Star. There is a stone-mounted plaque in the vicinity of the cabin site, which was placed by the Annie Oakley Committee in 1981, 121 years after her birth. The committee misspelled her birth surname on the cast bronze plaque, incorrectly ending in an "s" instead of "y".
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Dorothea Lange (Documentary Photographer/Photojournalist) |
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 Dorothea Lange (May 26, 1895 – October 11, 1965) was an influential American documentary photographer and photojournalist, best known for her Depression-era work for the Farm Security Administration (FSA). Lange's photographs humanized the tragic consequences of the Great Depression and profoundly influenced the development of documentary photography.
Born of second generation German immigrants on May 26, 1895, in Hoboken, New Jersey, Dorothea Lange was named Dorothea Margaretta Nutzhorn at birth. She dropped her middle name and assumed her mother's maiden name after her father abandoned the family when she was 12 years old, one of two traumatic incidents in her early life. The other was her contraction of polio at age seven which left her with a weakened right leg and a permanent limp. "It formed me, guided me, instructed me, helped me and humiliated me," Lange once said of her altered gait. "I've never gotten over it, and I am aware of the force and power of it."
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Katharine Hepburn (Actress/Record Oscar Winner) |
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 Katharine Houghton Hepburn (May 12, 1907 – June 29, 2003) was an American actress of film, television and stage.
Hepburn holds the record for the most Best Actress Oscar wins with four, from 12 nominations. Hepburn won an Emmy Award in 1976 for her lead role in Love Among the Ruins, and was nominated for four other Emmys, two Tony Awards and eight Golden Globes. In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked Hepburn as the greatest female star in the history of American cinema.
Hepburn had essential tremor, a chronic neurological condition that causes involuntary shaking of the head, hands, and feet.
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Anne Frank (Author/Holocaust Victim) |
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 Annelies Marie "Anne" Frank was born 12 June 1929 in Frankfurt am Main and died early March 1945 in Bergen Belsen. She is one of the most renowned and most discussed Jewish victims of the Holocaust.
Acknowledged for the quality of her writing, her diary has become one of the world's most widely read books, and has been the basis for several plays and films.
Born in the city of Frankfurt am Main in Weimar Germany, she lived most of her life in or near Amsterdam, in the Netherlands. By nationality, she was officially considered a German until 1941, when she lost her nationality owing to the anti-Semitic policies of Nazi Germany [The Nuremberg Laws].
She gained international fame posthumously following the publication of her diary which documents her experiences hiding during the German occupation of the Netherlands in World War II.
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Lucille Ball (Comedienne/Actress) |
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 Lucille Désirée Ball (August 6, 1911 – April 26, 1989) was an American comedienne, film, television, stage and radio actress, model, film and television executive, and star of the sitcoms I Love Lucy, The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour, The Lucy Show, Here's Lucy and Life With Lucy. One of the most popular and influential stars in America during her lifetime, with one of Hollywood's longest careers, especially on television, Ball was acting in the 1930s, becoming a B-movie star in the 1940s and a television star in the 1950s. She was still making films in the 1960s and 1970s. She was a radio actress during the 1940s, as well.
Ball received thirteen Emmy Award nominations and four wins. She was the recipient of the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award in 1979, the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Kennedy Center Honors in 1986 and the Governors Award from the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences in 1989.
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