Thanos Mikroutsikos

Athanasios "Thanos" Mikroutsikos was a Greek composer and politician. He is considered one of the most important composers of the recent Greek musical scene.

He was born on 13 April 1947 in Patra. He was the older brother of Andreas Mikroutsikos, who is also a musician/composer and a television show host. His wife was children's author Maria Papagianni, whom he married in 1996. 

He studied piano and composition in the Philharmonic Society of Patras, in the Hellenic Conservatory, and privately with Yiannis Papaioannou. In addition, he studied Mathematics in the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. He began composing at the end of the 1960s but only officially debuted in 1975, with the release of his album Politika Tragoudia ('Political Songs'). He continued on this compositional path, setting to music the poems of Giannis Ritsos, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Manos Eleftheriou and Bertold Brecht, amongst others.

His albums Kantata gia ti Makroniso (Cantata for Makronisos), Fouente Ovehouna (Fuenteovejuna), Troparia gia Foniades (Hymns for Murderers) and Mousiki Praxi Ston Brecht (Musical Practice on Brecht) are characteristic of the climate of Metapolitefsi or Regime Change that was taking place in the period 1975–78. In particular, the Cantata for Makronisos, a pioneering piece in which Mikroutsikos experimented with atonality was extremely well received in international music festivals and an interpretation of particular note was recorded by Maria Dimitriadi.

His next album, Stavros tou Notou (Southern Cross), set to the poetry of Nikos Kavvadias, opened up further musical avenues for him, combining theatre, electronic music and atonality (a second album, Grammes ton orizondon, set to the poetry of Kavvadias was released in 1991). With the same devotion to poetry, he continued to set the works of Giannis Ritsos, Alkis Alkaios, François Villon and Constantine P. Cavafy, amongst others. In addition, he has written an opera, Eleni (Helen) and set to music several children's fairytales.

He has worked with many renowned singers such as Maria Dimitriadi, Haris Alexiou, Manolis Mitsias, Dimitris Mitropanos, George Dalaras, Vasilis Papakonstantinou, Christos Thibaios, Miltiadis Paschalidis, Rita Antonopoulou and Giannis Koutras, amongst others. His music has been particularly well received and recognised in Western Europe. During his compositional career, he has managed to liberate the form of Greek song, adding together elements from the modernist and classical western tradition. He also experimented with the combination of tonal and atonal sounds and with morphological variation.

He was artistic director of the New Music Society and the Musical Analogion, whilst he also worked with and directed the Patras International Festival.

He was involved in Greece's political life since the 1960s. During the turbulent years of the Greek military junta of 1967–1974, he was persecuted by the regime for his anti-dictatorial activities and ideas. When the junta collapsed, he continued being actively involved in politics as a member of the maoist EKKE, especially in the first years after the restoration of democracy.

After the elections of October 1993, he was appointed as Deputy Minister of Culture by the new Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK) government, serving alongside the late Melina Mercouri who was Minister of Culture. He was appointed to Mercouri's position when she died in 1994, a position he kept until 1996.

He was a supporter of the Communist Party of Greece.

He died on 28 December 2019, at age 72.

Hendrik Andriessen

Hendrik Franciscus Andriessen was a Dutch composer and organist. 

He is remembered most of all for his improvisation at the organ and for the renewal of Catholic liturgical music in the Netherlands. Andriessen composed in a musical idiom that revealed strong French influences. He was the brother of pianist and composer Willem Andriessen and the father of the composers Jurriaan Andriessen and Louis Andriessen and of the flautist Heleen Andriessen.

Andriessen was born on September 17, 1892 in Haarlem, the son of Gezina Johanna (Vester), a painter, and Nicolaas Hendrik Andriessen, a church organist. He studied composition with Bernard Zweers and organ with Jean-Baptiste de Pauw [nl] at the Conservatorium van Amsterdam. As the organist at St. Catherine's Cathedral, Utrecht, he became well known for his improvisation abilities. From 1926 to 1954, he lectured in composition and music theory at the Amsterdam Conservatory while also teaching at the Institute for Catholic Church Music in Utrecht between 1930 and 1949. He was the director of the Utrecht Conservatory from 1937 to 1949.

During World War II, Andriessen refused to join the "Cultural House" (Kultuurkamer) and was thus barred from public functions by the Nazi occupiers. The only musical activities he was allowed were to give lessons and to accompany church services. He was held hostage by German occupiers from 13 July until 18 December 1942, when he was released.

In 1949, he was appointed director of the Royal Conservatory in The Hague, a post he held until 1957. Between 1954 and 1962, he was appointed an Extraordinary Professor of Musicology at the Catholic University of Nijmegen.

Andriessen's works included, besides eight masses, a setting of the Te Deum, four symphonies, variations for orchestra, lieder for voice and orchestra, chamber music, sonatas for cello and for piano, and works for solo organ. 

He died on April 12, 1981.

Pippo Barzizza

Giuseppe "Pippo" Barzizza was an Italian composer, arranger, conductor and music director.

Giuseppe Barzizza, called Pippo, was born in Genova on 15 May 1902, and died in Sanremo on 4 April 1994. He became famous in the 1930s and 1940s, at the beginning with Blue Star Orchestra and then with Orchestra Cetra. He composed songs and film soundtracks. His treatise, "Barzizza's method" was printed in 1952. His basics and exercises "are so clear that's it's enough to read this little book to overcome any doubts or hesitation!” Franco Franchi said, "Barzizza was among the first to be interested in jazz music and swing and he became for many years, together with his friend and rival Cinico Angelini, a great example for his fellows, both for his extraordinary compositions and his skills to find out new talents and songs, and for his attempt to give a modern mark to Italian music."

George Urbain

Georges Urbain was a French chemist, a professor of the Sorbonne, a member of the Institut de France, and director of the Institute of Chemistry in Paris. Much of his work focused on the rare earths, isolating and separating elements such as europium and gadolinium, and studying their spectra, their magnetic properties and their atomic masses. He discovered the element lutetium (atomic number 71). He also studied the efflorescence of saline hydrates.

After attending the Lycée Charlemagne and Lycée Lavoisier, Urbain studied at the École supérieure de physique et de chimie industrielles de la ville de Paris (ESPCI ParisTech). He graduated as the top student in the school's ninth graduating class, in 1894. At that time he also earned his "licence ès physique et chimie" at the Sorbonne.

Urbain served in teaching positions at the Préparateur at the École de Physique et Chimie Industrielle (1894-1895), in Charles Friedel's organic chemistry laboratory (1832-1899), in the Faculté des Science P.C.N. (1895-1898), and at the École Alsacienne (1897-1899).

He completed a thesis on Recherches sur la Séparation des Terres Rares (Research into the Separation of Rare Earth Elements) in 1899.

Urbain led the laboratories of the Compagnie Générale d’Electricité from 1899 to 1904. Among the topics he studied was the use of rare earth oxides to manufacture arc lamps. Next he became a teacher at the École de Physique et Chimie (1905-1906) and the Sorbonne (1906, 1908). In 1907 Urbain joined the Commission Internationale des Poids Atomiques.

During World War I Urbain served in the Ministry of War as a laboratory director and technical advisor for artillery and explosives. Following the war he taught at the École Centrale des Arts et Manufactures. In 1928 he accepted the chair of general chemistry at the Sorbonne, in addition to serving as Director of Chemistry at the Institute of Biologie. Urbain was also appointed head of the Chemistry Section of the Palais de la Découverte, director of the Chemical Treatment laboratory of Thiais, and president of the École Pratique des Hautes Etudes (2nd section).

Urbain developed new and more efficient techniques for the separation of rare earths. By taking advantage of the weights of rare earths, he was able to design procedures to separate light from heavy fractions, using magnesium and bismuth nitrates. This enabled him to test and refute a number of inaccurate rare earth "discoveries" claimed by other scientists.

Urbain discovered the element lutetium (atomic number 71) independently in 1907 when he demonstrated that Jean Charles Galissard de Marignac's ytterbia contained two substances. Through spectral analysis of both, he was able to characterize them and prove that they were distinct elements. Urbain called his two components "neoytterbia" and "lutecia."

These components of ytterbia were independently isolated around the same time by Austrian chemist Carl Auer von Welsbach and the American chemist Charles James. Urbain and Welsbach accused each other of publishing results based on the other party. The dispute was officially settled in 1909 by the Commission on Atomic Mass, which granted priority to Urbain as the first to describe the separation of lutetium from ytterbium. Urbain's "lutecia" was adapted to "lutetium". Urbain's name "neoytterbium" was temporarily adopted, but later Marignac's name was restored to the element ytterbium.

In 1911 Urbain isolated another new element which he called "celtium", but his studies were interrupted by World War I. In 1922, he announced his new element, fully characterizing its emission spectrum, but mistakenly identifying it as a rare earth. George de Hevesy and Dirk Coster also characterized it, placing it more accurately, and called it "hafnium". A decades-long controversy over credit and naming was eventually decided in favor of hafnium. Although Urbain was right in detecting the presence of a new element, the spectra and the chemical behavior he described were not a good match to the element later isolated. In part, the controversy resulted from the different techniques used by chemists like Urbain, who favored chemical reduction techniques, and physicists who increasingly relied on new X-ray spectroscopy methods.

As of 1919, Urbain had completed an extensive study of phosphorescence spectra, and demonstrated that trace impurities could dramatically alter results. By introducing impurities into artificially prepared mixtures, he was able to duplicate the results reported by other researchers, again testing claims about possible new elements.

Urbain was also a composer and sculptor.

Urbain died on November 5, 1938.

Robert Gerhard

Robert Gerhard i Ottenwaelder was a Spanish Catalan composer and musical scholar and writer, generally known outside Catalonia as Roberto Gerhard.

Gerhard was born in Valls, near Tarragona, Spain, the son of a German-Swiss father and an Alsatian mother. He was predisposed to an international, multilingual outlook. He studied piano with Enrique Granados and composition with scholar-composer Felip Pedrell, teacher of Isaac Albéniz, Granados and Manuel de Falla. When Pedrell died in 1922, Gerhard tried unsuccessfully to become a pupil of Falla and considered studying with Charles Koechlin in Paris but then approached Arnold Schoenberg, who on the strength of a few early compositions accepted him as his only Spanish pupil. Gerhard spent several years with Schoenberg in Vienna and Berlin.

Returning to Barcelona in 1928, he devoted his energies to new music through concerts and journalism, in conjunction with the flourishing literary and artistic avant-garde of Catalonia. He befriended Joan Miró and Pablo Casals, brought Schoenberg and Anton Webern to Barcelona, and was the principal organizer of the 1936 ISCM Festival there. He also collected, edited and performed folksongs and old Spanish music from the Renaissance to the eighteenth century.

Identified with the Republican cause throughout the Spanish Civil War (as musical adviser to the Minister of Fine Arts in the Catalan Government and a member of the Republican Government's Social Music Council), Gerhard was forced to flee to France in 1939 and later that year settled in Cambridge, England. Until the death of Francisco Franco, his music was virtually proscribed in Spain, to which he never returned except for holidays. Apart from copious work for the BBC and in the theatre, Gerhard's compositions of the 1940s were explicitly related to aspects of Spanish and Catalan culture, beginning in 1940 with a Symphony in memory of Pedrell and the first version of the ballet Don Quixote. They culminated in a masterpiece as The Duenna (a Spanish opera on an English play by Richard Brinsley Sheridan, which is set in Spain). The Covent Garden production of Don Quixote and the BBC broadcasts of The Duenna popularized Gerhard's reputation in the UK though not in Spain.

During the 1950s, the legacy of Schoenbergian serialism, a background presence in these overtly national works, engendered an increasingly radical approach to composition which, by the 1960s, placed Gerhard firmly in the ranks of the avant-garde. From the early 1950s Gerhard suffered from a heart condition which eventually ended his life. He died in Cambridge in 1970 and is buried at the Parish of the Ascension Burial Ground in Cambridge, with his wife Leopoldina 'Poldi' Feichtegger Gerhard (1903–1994).

His archive is kept at Cambridge University Library. Other personal papers of Robert Gerhard are preserved in the Biblioteca de Catalunya.

Karlheinz Stockhausen

Karlheinz Stockhausen was a German composer, widely acknowledged by critics as one of the most important but also controversial composers of the 20th and early 21st centuries. He is known for his groundbreaking work in electronic music, for introducing controlled chance (aleatory techniques) into serial composition, and for musical spatialization.

He was educated at the Hochschule für Musik Köln and the University of Cologne, later studying with Olivier Messiaen in Paris and with Werner Meyer-Eppler at the University of Bonn. One of the leading figures of the Darmstadt School, his compositions and theories were and remain widely influential, not only on composers of art music, but also on jazz and popular music. His works, composed over a period of nearly sixty years, eschew traditional forms. In addition to electronic music—both with and without live performers—they range from miniatures for musical boxes through works for solo instruments, songs, chamber music, choral and orchestral music, to a cycle of seven full-length operas. His theoretical and other writings comprise ten large volumes. He received numerous prizes and distinctions for his compositions, recordings, and for the scores produced by his publishing company.

His notable compositions include the series of nineteen Klavierstücke (Piano Pieces), Kontra-Punkte for ten instruments, the electronic/musique-concrète Gesang der Jünglinge, Gruppen for three orchestras, the percussion solo Zyklus, Kontakte, the cantata Momente, the live-electronic Mikrophonie I, Hymnen, Stimmung for six vocalists, Aus den sieben Tagen, Mantra for two pianos and electronics, Tierkreis, Inori for soloists and orchestra, and the gigantic opera cycle Licht.

He died of sudden heart failure at the age of 79, on 5 December 2007 at his home in Kürten, Germany.

George Bird Grinnell

George Bird Grinnell was an American anthropologist, historian, naturalist, and writer. 

Grinnell was born on September 20, 1849 in Brooklyn, New York, and graduated from Yale University with a B.A. in 1870 and a Ph.D. in 1880. Originally specializing in zoology, he became a prominent early conservationist and student of Native American life. Grinnell has been recognized for his influence on public opinion and work on legislation to preserve the American bison. Mount Grinnell in Glacier National Park in Montana is named after Grinnell.

Grinnell died on April 11, 1938.

Claude Champagne

Claude Champagne was a French Canadian composer, teacher, pianist, and violinist.

Born as Joseph-Arthur-Adonaï Claude Champagne in Montreal, Quebec, Champagne began piano and theory at 10 with Orpha-F. Deveaux, and continued with Romain-Octave Pelletier I and Alexis Contant at the Conservatoire national de musique. At 14, he studied violin with Albert Chamberland. He earned diplomas from private institutions: the Dominion College of Music (theory and piano, 1908) and the Conservatoire national of Montreal.

Between 1910 and 1921 Champagne taught piano, violin, and other instruments at the Varennes and Longueuil colleges. He performed on viola and saxophone with the Canadian Grenadier Guards Band directed by J.-J. Gagnier and gave private lessons in theory and harmony. He accompanied choirs, including that of the Maisonneuve district, and played violin during intermissions at the National, a variety theatre.

In 1921 Champagne went to Paris to study music. By then he had developed an interest in modality, which stayed with him the rest of his life.

At his return to Canada, Champagne became heavily involved in teaching. HIn 1932 he joined the Faculty of Music at McGill University, where he taught until 1941.

He played an instrumental role in establishing the Conservatoire de musique et d'art dramatique du Québec in 1942. In 1943 he was appointed the first assistant director of the Montreal Conservatoire. In the 1950s, with Boris Berlin, he published a series of sight reading exercise books for students. In 1950 his post-romantic work Concerto was recorded by BMI Canada, and in about 1955 his First String Quartet was performed by the Montreal String Quartet, and recorded by the CBC Transcription Service.

He was attached to the Montreal Catholic School Commission as co-ordinator of solfége in elementary schools, and he was at the same time professor at the McGill Conservatory. After that, he taught many Canadian composers including Jean Vallerand and François Morel.

He died in Montreal on December 21, 1965. A concert hall at the Université de Montréal was later named for him.

Alexander Courage

Alexander Mair Courage, was an American orchestrator, arranger, and composer of music, primarily for television and film. He is best known as the composer of the theme music for the original Star Trek series.

Courage was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He received a music degree from the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York, in 1941. He served in the United States Army Air Forces in the western United States during the Second World War. During that period, he also found the time to compose music for the radio. His credits in this medium include the programs Adventures of Sam Spade Detective, Broadway Is My Beat, Hollywood Soundstage, and Romance.

Courage began as an orchestrator and arranger at MGM studios, which included work in such films as the 1951 Show Boat ("Life Upon the Wicked Stage" number); Hot Rod Rumble (1957 film); The Band Wagon ("I Guess I'll Have to Change My Plan"); Gigi (the can-can for the entrance of patrons at Maxim's); and the barn raising dance from Seven Brides for Seven Brothers.

He frequently served as an orchestrator on films scored by André Previn (My Fair Lady, "The Circus is a Wacky World", and "You're Gonna Hear from Me" production numbers for Inside Daisy Clover), Adolph Deutsch (Funny Face, Some Like It Hot), John Williams (The Poseidon Adventure, Superman, Jurassic Park, and the Academy Award-nominated musical films Fiddler on the Roof and Tom Sawyer), and Jerry Goldsmith (Rudy, Mulan, The Mummy, et al.). He also arranged the Leslie Bricusse score (along with Lionel Newman) for Doctor Dolittle (1967).

Apart from his work as a respected orchestrator, Courage also contributed original dramatic scores to films, including two westerns: Arthur Penn's The Left Handed Gun (1958) and André de Toth's Day of the Outlaw (1959), and the Connie Francis comedy Follow the Boys (1963). He continued writing music for movies throughout the 1980s and 1990s, including the score for Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (1987), which incorporated three new musical themes by John Williams in addition to Courage's adapted and original cues for the film. Courage's score for Superman IV: The Quest for Peace was released on CD in early 2008 by the Film Music Monthly company as part of its boxed set Superman - The Music, while La-La Land Records released a fully expanded restoration of the score on May 8, 2018 as part of Superman's 80th anniversary.

Courage also worked as a composer on such television shows as Daniel Boone, The Brothers Brannagan, Lost in Space, Eight Is Enough, and Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. Judd, for the Defense, Young Dr. Kildare and The Brothers Brannagan were the only television series besides Star Trek for which he composed the main theme.

The composer Jerry Goldsmith and Courage teamed on the long-running television show The Waltons in which Goldsmith composed the theme and Courage the Aaron Copland-influenced incidental music. In 1988, Courage won an Emmy Award for his music direction on the special Julie Andrews: The Sound of Christmas. In the 1990s, Courage succeeded Arthur Morton as Goldsmith's primary orchestrator.

Courage and Goldsmith collaborated again on orchestrations for Goldsmith's score for the 1997 film "The Edge."

Courage frequently collaborated with John Williams during the latter's tenure with the Boston Pops Orchestra.

At the age of 35, Courage married Mareile Beate Odlum on October 6, 1955.

Mareile, born in Germany, was the daughter of Rudolf Wolff and Elisabeth Loechelt. After Wolff's suicide Elisabeth married Carl Wilhelm Richard Hülsenbeck, renowned for his involvement in the Dada movement in Europe. Hülsenbeck brought his wife (Elisabeth), son (Tom) and step-daughter (Mareile) to the United States in 1938 to avoid the political situation rapidly developing in Europe. After arriving in the USA he changed his last name to Hulbeck.

Mareile's marriage to Courage was her third. Her second marriage was to Bruce Odlum (son of financier Floyd Odlum) in 1944. That union produced two sons, Christopher (1947) and Brian (1949).

When Courage married Mareile he accepted the responsibility of acting stepfather to Mareile's two children of a previous marriage. The family originally lived together on Erskine Dr. in Pacific Palisades, but later moved to a mountainside home on Beverly Crest Drive in Beverly Hills.

Aside from his musical abilities Courage was also an avid and accomplished photographer. He took many dramatic photos of bullfights and auto racing. He was a racing enthusiast, and his interest in that sport and photography brought him into contact with many racing personalities of the era, notably Phil Hill and Stirling Moss, both of whom he considered friends. Moss paid at least one social visit to the Erskine residence.

Though a dedicated stepfather to Christopher and Brian, Courage's musical career took precedence over his familial responsibilities. He sought to interest his step-children in music, and was responsible for arranging Brian's first musical lessons, on alto saxophone. Later in life Brian became a composer of serious electronic music, though the vocation was not apparent during his childhood, as he was a poor saxophone student.

Alexander and Mareile were divorced April 1, 1963. Courage subsequently married Kristin M. Zethren on July 14, 1967. That marriage also ended in divorce in 1972.

Courage is best known for writing the theme music for the original Star Trek series, and other music for that series. Courage was hired by Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry to score the original series at Jerry Goldsmith's suggestion, after Goldsmith turned down the job.

Courage went on to score incidental music for episodes "The Man Trap" and "The Naked Time" and some cues for "Mudd's Women." Courage reportedly became alienated from Roddenberry when Roddenberry claimed half of the theme music royalties. Roddenberry wrote words for Courage's theme, not because he expected the lyrics to be sung on television, but so that he (Roddenberry) could receive half of the royalties from the song by claiming credit as the composition's co-writer. Courage was replaced by composer Fred Steiner who was then hired to write the musical scores for the remainder of the first season.

After sound editors had difficulty finding the right effect, Courage himself made the iconic "whoosh" sound heard while the Enterprise flies across the screen, 

He returned to Star Trek to score two more episodes for the show's third and final season, episodes "The Enterprise Incident" and "Plato's Stepchildren," allegedly as a courtesy to Producer Robert Justman.

Notably, after later serving as Goldsmith's orchestrator, when Goldsmith composed the music for Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Courage orchestrated Goldsmith's adaptation of his original Star Trek theme.

Following Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Courage's iconic opening fanfare to the Star Trek theme became one of the franchise's most famous and memorable musical cues. The fanfare has been used in multiple motion pictures and television series, notably Star Trek: The Next Generation and the four feature films based upon that series, three of which were scored by Goldsmith.

Courage had been in declining health for several years before he died on May 15, 2008, at the Sunrise assisted-living facility in Pacific Palisades, California. He had suffered a series of strokes prior to his death. His mausoleum is in Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery.

Michel Legrand

Michel Jean Legrand was a French musical composer, arranger, conductor, and jazz pianist. Legrand was a prolific composer, having written over 200 film and television scores, in addition to many songs. His scores for two of the films of French New Wave director Jacques Demy, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964) and The Young Girls of Rochefort (1967), earned Legrand his first Academy Award nominations. Legrand won his first Oscar for the song "The Windmills of Your Mind" from The Thomas Crown Affair (1968), and additional Oscars for Summer of '42 (1971) and Barbra Streisand's Yentl (1983).

Legrand was born in Paris to his father, Raymond Legrand, who was himself a conductor and composer, and his mother, Marcelle Ter-Mikaëlian, who was the sister of conductor Jacques Hélian. Raymond and Marcelle were married in 1929. His maternal grandfather was Armenian.

Legrand composed more than two hundred film and television scores. He won three Oscars and five Grammys. He studied music at the Conservatoire de Paris from age 11, working with, among others, Nadia Boulanger and graduated with top honors as both a composer and a pianist. He burst upon the international music scene at 22 when his album I Love Paris became a surprise hit. He established his name in the United States by working with such jazz stars as Miles Davis and Stan Getz. His sister Christiane Legrand was a member of The Swingle Singers and his niece Victoria Legrand is a member of the dream pop band Beach House.

Legrand composed music for Jacques Demy's films The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964) and The Young Girls of Rochefort (1967), and appeared and performed in Agnès Varda's Cléo from 5 to 7 (1961). He also composed music for Joseph Losey's Eva (1962), The Thomas Crown Affair (1968) (which features "The Windmills of Your Mind"), Ice Station Zebra (1968), The Picasso Summer (1969), The Lady in the Car with Glasses and a Gun (1970), The Go-Between (1971), Summer of '42 (1971), Clint Eastwood's Breezy (1973), The Three Musketeers (1973), Orson Welles's last-completed film F for Fake (1974) and would later compose the score for Welles's posthumously-released movie The Other Side of the Wind (2018). He also composed the score for Yentl (1983), as well as the film score for Louis Malle's film Atlantic City (1980). His instrumental version of the theme from Brian's Song charted 56th in 1972 on the Billboard's pop chart.

Legrand died of sepsis, during the night of 25–26 January 2019, at the American Hospital of Paris in Neuilly-sur-Seine, where he had been hospitalized for two weeks for a pulmonary infection. His funeral was held in Paris at the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral on 1 February 2019. He was interred at the Père Lachaise Cemetery.

Ross Lee Finney

Ross Lee Finney Junior was an American composer who taught for many years at the University of Michigan.

Born in Wells, Minnesota, Finney received his early training at Carleton College and the University of Minnesota and also studied with Nadia Boulanger, Edward Burlingame Hill, Alban Berg (from 1931 to 1932) and Roger Sessions (in 1935). In 1928 he spent a year at Harvard University and then joined the faculty at Smith College, where he founded the Smith College Archives and conducted the Northampton Chamber Orchestra.[1] In 1935, his setting of poems by Archibald MacLeish won the Connecticut Valley Prize, and in 1937, his First String Quartet received a Pulitzer Scholarship Award. A Guggenheim Fellowship funded travel in Europe in 1937. During World War II, Finney served in the Office of Strategic Services, and received a Purple Heart and a Certificate of Merit.

In 1948, following a second Guggenheim Fellowship, Finney joined the University of Michigan faculty. There he was the founder of the University of Michigan Electronic Music Studio in 1965 and composed the score for the sesquicentennial celebration of the University of Michigan in 1967. He retired in 1974.

Finney's works were presented at the 1965 Congregation of the Arts at the Hopkins Center of Dartmouth College, at the University of Kansas, the University of Southern California, and for the 1966 Festival of Contemporary Music at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. Finney collected many honors, including membership in the National Institute of Arts and Letters, honorary membership in Phi Beta Kappa and an honorary doctorate from Carleton College. His "Second Symphony" represented the United States at the 1963 Rostrum of International Composers at UNESCO headquarters at Paris.

According to the notes for the Composers Recordings, Inc. recording of Finney's Cello Sonata No. 2 (about 1953), Chromatic Fantasy In E for solo cello (1957) and Piano Trio No. 2 (1954), he received the Rome Prize in 1960 and the Brandeis Medal in 1968. He is quoted in those notes as having begun writing serial music from time to time beginning in 1950 with his String Quartet No. 6 (a work which uses serial principles but is "in E" on the score), his next composition after the sonata.

Finney died on February 4, 1997, at his home in Carmel, California. He was 90.

Ray Sprigle

Ray Sprigle was a journalist for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. He won a Pulitzer Prize in 1938 for his reporting that Alabama Senator Hugo Black, newly appointed to the US Supreme Court, had been a member of the 20th-century Ku Klux Klan.

Sprigle's account of traveling in 1948 for a month in the Deep South while passing for black was first serialized by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in August 1948. The series was adapted as a book, In the Land of Jim Crow, and published in 1949.

Sprigle was born in Akron, Ohio, to parents of colonial German (Pennsylvania Dutch) ancestry. He attended local schools. He left Ohio State University after his freshman year and started working as a newspaper reporter and a freelance pulp fiction writer.

Sprigle had a long and notable career in newspaper journalism, mostly as a general reporter with the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

In 1938 he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Reporting for a series of articles in the Post-Gazette proving that Hugo Black, newly appointed as a justice to the United States Supreme Court by President Franklin Roosevelt, had been a member of the Ku Klux Klan in Alabama. The evidence that Sprigle uncovered included, among other things, a photostatic copy of a letter from Black written on the stationery of the Alabama Klan asking to resign from the organization.

In May 1948, Sprigle, at age 61 and using the name "James Crawford," began a thirty-day, four-thousand-mile undercover mission through the Deep South. Passing as a black man, he was supported by the NAACP and accompanied by John Wesley Dobbs, a prominent 66-year-old political leader and early civil rights activist from Atlanta. Dobbs, who was known and respected across the South, took Sprigle into many black communities and introduced him as a NAACP field investigator to people he otherwise would never have been able to meet or interview.

When Sprigle returned to Pittsburgh he wrote 21 powerful and passionate first-person articles that exposed white readers to the oppression, discrimination and humiliation that 10 million black Americans were being subjected to every day by the South's system of legal segregation. The series, featured on the front page of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette under the title I Was a Negro in the South for 30 Days, reported on a range of social, political and economic issues, including the inferiority of segregated black public schools. According to the paper's publisher, the Post-Gazette had never run a series that received more attention.

Sprigle's series was nationally syndicated and carried by about 15 other newspapers, including the New York Herald Tribune, Philadelphia Inquirer and the Pittsburgh Courier, the country's largest African American-owned newspaper, which had editions in more than a dozen cities and was widely read by blacks in the South.

Sprigle's undercover journalism preceded by more than a decade novelist John Howard Griffin's similar but much more famous effort to learn what daily life was like for a Southern black man. Griffin, who dyed his skin black, turned his experiences into the 1961 bestseller Black Like Me.

Sprigle died on December 22, 1957.

Ray Price

Raymond Kissam Price Jr. was an American writer who was the chief speechwriter for U.S. President Richard Nixon, working on both inaugural addresses, his resignation speech, and Gerald Ford's pardon speech. 

During Nixon's presidential campaign of 1968, the candidate made use of the contrasting style of two speechwriters (the other being Pat Buchanan) with Price becoming known to colleagues as Mr Outside because his work was aimed at broadening Nixon's appeal.

A native of New York City, Price graduated from Yale University in 1951. There, he was a member of the Conservative Party of the Yale Political Union and also belonged to Skull and Bones.

Price wrote a retrospective on the presidency titled With Nixon and assisted Nixon in the writing of several books. John Dean mentioned Price as one person suspected (falsely) of having been Deep Throat. For 19 years, Price was a member of the Economic Club of New York.

Price died on February 13, 2019.

Josef Herman

Josef Herman was a highly regarded Polish-British painter who influenced contemporary art, particularly in the United Kingdom. His work often depicted workers as its subject and was inherently political. He was among more than a generation of eastern European Jewish artists who emigrated to escape persecution and worked abroad. For eleven years he lived in Ystradgynlais, a mining community in South Wales.

Herman was born in Warsaw into a Polish-Jewish family, on 3 January 1911. He attended the Warsaw School of Art, where he trained as a typesetter and graphic designer and then for two years worked briefly as a graphic artist. In 1938 at the age of 27, Herman left Poland for Brussels. He was introduced to many of the prominent artists then working in the city. After the beginning of World War II and the German invasion of Belgium, he escaped to France and then to Great Britain.

He first lived in Glasgow, where he met fellow artist Jankel Adler and between 1940 and 1943 he contributed to a remarkable wartime artistic renaissance in the city. He then moved to London, where he met numerous other European émigrés, such as the Hungarian Michael Peto, with whom he became friends. When Peto decided to go into photography after the war, Herman encouraged him in his new endeavour and supported his progress as a photojournalist. In 1942 Herman learned through the Red Cross that his entire family had perished in the Warsaw Ghetto.

In 1943 he held his first London exhibition with L. S. Lowry. Herman's own style was bold and distinctive, involving strong shapes with minimal detail. He continued to work up to his death in 2000.

Herman studied working people as the subjects of his art, including grape pickers, fishermen and, most notably, coal miners. The latter became a particular interest for Herman during the eleven years that he lived in Ystradgynlais, a mining community in South Wales, beginning in 1944. He became part of the community, where he was fondly nicknamed "Joe Bach" (Little Joe). Among his creative collaborators and friends in Wales was the artist Will Roberts, who lived in Neath. Herman is quoted as saying: "I stayed here because I found ALL I required. I arrived a stranger for a fortnight. The fortnight became eleven years."

When commissioned in 1951 to paint a mural for the Festival of Britain, Herman took coal miners as his subject. His work Miners (1951) showed six men resting above ground after their work. Herman said, "I think it is one of my key pictures and the most important one I did in Wales." The mural is held in the permanent collection of the Glynn Vivian Art Gallery, affiliated with the Swansea Museum.

Some of Herman's work was collected by the Davies sisters, British art patrons and collectors in Wales, as part of their 20th-century holdings. They bequeathed their joint collection of 260 works, particularly strong in Impressionist and post-Impressionist paintings and sculptures, to the National Museum Wales in the mid-20th century, greatly expanding its range.

Leaving Wales in 1955 because his health was affected by the damp climate, Herman lived briefly in Spain and then in London. All the same, he was awarded the Gold Medal for Fine Art at the 1962 National Eisteddfod of Wales.

In 1955 Herman moved to Suffolk with his partner, Nini Ettlinger, whom he married in 1961. The death of their young daughter prompted them to move away and from 1972 Herman lived in the house in West London where he died in February 2000.

Sir Donald Bailey

Sir Donald Coleman Bailey was an English civil engineer who invented the Bailey bridge. Field Marshal Montgomery is recorded as saying that "without the Bailey bridge, we should not have won the war."

Bailey attended Rotherham Grammar School and The Leys School in Cambridge. He read for a BEng degree at the University of Sheffield and graduated in 1923.

Bailey was a civil servant in the War Office when he designed his bridge. Another engineer, A. M. Hamilton, successfully demonstrated that the Bailey bridge breached a patent on the Callender-Hamilton bridge, though the Bailey bridge was generally regarded as being superior for temporary use. Because the bridge used a pin joining system similar to that used in the Martel Bridge designed by Lt.-General Sir Giffard Le Quesne Martel, Hamilton also told the commission the Bailey bridge should be called a 'Martel Mk2', and Martel was later awarded £500 for infringement on the design of his box girder bridge.

Bailey was knighted in 1946 for his bridge design. By this time he was living quietly in Southbourne in Bournemouth. Dorothy Barnes, one of the girls at the Southbourne Crossroads bank, which he used regularly was surprised to learn that her unassuming customer had been knighted. 

He died in Bournemouth in 1985. 

Sir Archibald Russell

Sir Archibald Russell was a British aerospace engineer who worked most of his career at the Bristol Aeroplane Company, before becoming managing director of the Filton Division when Bristol merged into British Aircraft Corporation in 1960. He also served as the vice-chairman of the BAC-Sud Aviation Concorde Committee that produced the Concorde, working alongside Morien Morgan. His designs include the Blenheim, Britannia, Type 188 and many others. He was known throughout his career as a perfectionist, as well as his criticism for those who did not measure up – criticisms that included ministers, civil servants, the Brabazon Committee and BOAC.

Archibald Russell was born in Cinderford, Gloucestershire. He was raised in the Forest of Dean and attended East Dean Grammar School where his father (known as "the mathemagician" owing to his facility in complex mental calculation) was headmaster. When he was fifteen the family moved to Bristol and his education continued at Fairfield Grammar School, and then the Engineering faculty of Bristol University where he gained a BSc in automotive engineering. His first job was maintaining buses for the Bristol Tramways & Carriage Company, one of Sir George White's companies.

Another of George White's companies was the Bristol Aeroplane Company. Russell joined the company in May 1925, at age 21, as an assistant in the stress office. He met Miss Lorna Mansfield, a secretary at the company, and they were married for over 50 years. One of his first efforts at the company were stress calculations for the Type 99 Badminton, a biplane racer being built for the 1926 King's Cup. The Badminton crashed a month before the race, which gravely concerned Russell until the reason was revealed to be a seized engine. Another early design was the Type 95 Bagshot, a twin-engine monoplane fighter. Russell was invited to take a flight in the Bagshot, and was alarmed to see the wings twisting during control use, a problem that led to the abandoning of the design. He developed a new method of separately calculating bending and torsional stresses, which later led to a new single-spar monoplane wing design that was granted a patent.

Over a short period of time, Chief Designer Frank Barnwell drew Russell closer into the primary design team. He worked on the Type 105 Bulldog, which went on to see production of more than 500 examples. This was followed by another monoplane fighter, the Type 133, but the contract was won by the Gloster Gladiator instead.

In 1935 the first of the RAF Expansion Schemes was launched, and Bristol won two contracts for monoplanes, the Bombay troop-carrier and the Blenheim bomber. Barnwell and his two chief assistants, Leslie Frise and Russell, looked to address the Bagshot's wing problems in the Bombay, and over-designed it to ensure flexing would not be an issue. The design suffered as a result, both overweight and extremely difficult to manufacture. Only 50 were built and saw limited service.

The Blenheim was based on newer designs and was originally built for speed, not utility. It was the result of contest to produce the fastest four-passenger plane in Europe, and therefore did not require the higher weights and ruggedness of the Bombay. It had a much simpler design, but proved just as capable, and was easily adapted into a light bomber. The Blenheim was far more successful than Bombay, with over 1,000 delivered by the start of the Second World War in September 1939.

In August 1938 Barnwell had been killed flying a small aeroplane of his own design. Leslie Frise took over the Chief Designer role, with Russell becoming deputy. They were immediately put to work on a variety of development of the Blenheim, including the Type 152 Beaufort and Type 156 Beaufighter. More than 5,500 Beaufighters were built before the war ended. A final development, the Type 164 "Brigand", was produced only in small numbers before being replaced by the English Electric Canberra.

In 1941 the Air Staff placed a development contract for a long-range, 100 ton, 300 mph heavy bomber with a bomb load of 80,000 lbs. The aircraft was designed to fill Barnes Wallis' concept of the "Victory Bomber", which would drop huge "earth quake bombs" that would destroy dams and other power plants even with a near miss, and thereby render Germany unable to run its industry. Frise and Russell started work on such a design, featuring extensive streamlining for lower drag and better range, powered by eight Centaurus engines, paired to drive four propellers. But before the design had got very far, Wallis had moved onto the idea of a smaller special-purpose bomb that could fill the same role, but would be much smaller. This developed into the famed bouncing bomb carried by the Avro Lancaster.

In February 1944 this work was able to be re-used when the Brabazon Committee ordered a very large transatlantic airliner to carry 90 passengers for 5,000 miles in 17 hours, all with sleeping accommodation. Frise and Russell had just started work on this adaptation when Frise quit to become Technical Director of Hunting Aircraft. Russell was promoted to Chief Designer in his place. The new design emerged as the Brabazon, but proved to be a commercial failure. Overly large and too slow, it was entering the market just as turboprop and jet engines were coming into the field. BOAC asked for the second prototype to be powered by four Proteus turboprops in place of the eight Centaurus', but this engine would need additional development before it could be fitted and BOAC lost interest in the meantime. The prototype was later cut up after suffering from fatigue cracks in the engine/propeller mounting structures.

While the Brabazon was turning from design to prototype, the company directors asked Russell to start development of a much more modest freighter design. This emerged as the Bristol Freighter in 1945. A small number were sold to a variety of users, and the design was a modest success.

In 1947 Bristol won a design competition for "An airliner to required to carry thirty six passengers on routes to South Africa, Australia and the Far East." The number of passengers, 36, had been set by the capacity of the standard BOAC airport bus. Russell redesigned the plane for 68 passengers instead, producing the Britannia. As development continued, BOAC decided the Proteus was ready for airline use, and asked for development to be switched to this engine. With some additional wing area, this allowed the passenger capacity to be increased to 96 without altering the fuselage.

The first prototype flew in August 1952, but the engines were still not ready for production. The second prototype, with upgraded Proteus III's, flew in December 1953. This example caught fire in February 1954 and had to be ditched. The cause was eventually traced to a failure in the propeller reduction gearing, but did not significantly set back development. However, at this point the de Havilland Comet suffered a series of mysterious crashes, and the ensuing investigation discovered extensive metal fatigue problems. This led to a new requirement that all designs had to undergo extensive water tank testing. After passing these tests, the Proteus engines proved to have icing problems, leading to additional redesigns. By the time the Britannia finally entered service in 1957, the Boeing 707 and Douglas DC-8 were about to enter service, dramatically limiting interest in the Britannia.

In the late 1950s Russell led the design of the Bristol Type 200, a concept that competed with the Hawker Siddeley Trident. Russell felt that British European Airways' (BEA) specification was too small, so the Type 200 was closer in size and range to the Boeing 727, which later sold almost 10 times as well as the Trident. In 1958 BEA selected the Trident and the Type 200 was cancelled.

Through the 1950s Russell became increasingly interested in supersonic flight, and was particularly interested in the "breathtaking novelty" of the slender delta wing, which gave good lift at high angle of attack due to the phenomenon of vortex lift. Russell and his team proposed a number of designs using the new wing, eventually leading a number of paper studies for a supersonic transport, starting with the Type 198 in 1961.

The team, led by Bill Strang, Mick Wilde, Doug Thorn and Douglas Vickery, had produced a number of designs when they learned of similar efforts at Sud Aviation under the Super-Caravelle project. Russell developed a friendship with his counterpart at Sud, Louis Giusta, which aided the eventual formation of the Concorde project. Russell became the joint chairman of the Concorde Executive Committee of Directors between 1965 and 1969. Russell was appointed chairman, Filton Division of the British Aircraft Corporation (BAC) in 1968 and retired in 1969. He was also vice-chairman, BAC-Sud Aviation Concorde Committee 1969 to 1970.

Russell won the RAeS British Gold Medal in 1951, was made CBE in 1954, FRS in 1970 and Knighted in 1972. With his wife Lorna he had one son and one daughter. Lorna died in 1984 and Russell married Judy Humphrey in 1986. Archibald Russell died in Angarrack, Cornwall on 29 May 1995, one day short of his 91st birthday.

Joe Savoldi

Joseph Anthony Savoldi Jr., known by his nickname "Jumping Joe" Savoldi, was an Italian-American professional wrestler, football player, and Special Ops agent for the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) during World War II.

Savoldi was born two months premature in Castano Primo (Italy). He spent his childhood in Castano Primo and Bergamo (Milan, Italy) and was raised by his grandmother and an aunt before finally joining his family in Three Oaks, Michigan at age twelve. Giuseppe Savoldi anglicized his first name to "Joe" and became an athlete in high school, excelling in football, basketball, baseball, and track.

After graduation from Three Oaks High, he enrolled at the University of Notre Dame, where, beginning in 1928, he played football for the Fighting Irish teams coached by Knute Rockne. His first start for Notre Dame came during his sophomore year against would-be national champion, Georgia Tech, after Rockne's first, second, and third string fullbacks all fell to injuries. The following week, coach Rockne moved Savoldi from running back to the line, and Savoldi briefly quit the squad before being moved back to the running back position.

The All-American fullback was first nicknamed, "Galloping Joe," followed by "The Wandering Wop," followed by "The People's Choice," before finally earning the moniker "Jumping Joe." The nickname that finally stuck, was a result of a play he made in a 1929 game against Carnegie Tech, when he scored a touchdown by diving up and over the goal line to win the game. Although commonplace now, diving over the line of scrimmage could be dangerous during a period of leather helmets and little, or no, shoulder padding. Other career highlights for Savoldi came on October 4, 1930, when he scored the first ever Notre Dame touchdown at the newly opened Notre Dame Stadium; and one week later, when he scored three touchdowns against Navy, sealing his fame as "the first hero in the lore of Notre Dame's $750,000.00 stadium." Savoldi averaged 11 yards per carry and 40 yards per kick off return, and due to his size (5'11" 218lbs) was known for his punishing style of running the ball. His career came to a sudden end on November 17, 1930 when he withdrew from school after divorce papers were filed, and news of his secret marriage was leaked to the press. Savoldi and his Notre Dame teammates were undefeated national champions during both the 1929 and 1930 seasons.

Upon Savoldi's expulsion from Notre Dame, he was first signed by Curly Lambeau of the Green Bay Packers, but when local Chicago Bears fans heard the news, their harsh criticism of George Halas not signing Savoldi led to an elaborate double-cross of Lambeau. According to Halas, Lambeau had broken the newly created "Grange Rule" by signing Savoldi prior to his senior class having graduated. But as soon as Lambeau retracted Savoldi's contract, Halas signed Savoldi, and Jumping Joe joined the Bears. Lambeau and the Packers then protested with commissioner Carr, but the commissioner allowed the Bears to keep Savoldi as long as they were willing to pay a fine of $1,000 per game that Savoldi played in. The Bears started Savoldi at the halfback position opposite Red Grange, and in his first game (only ten days after leaving Notre Dame), he scored the only touchdown in a 6–0 victory over Ernie Nevers' Cardinals on Thanksgiving Day in Wrigley Field.

After helping the Bears win their final three games of the season (including a 21–0 upset of Lambeau's Packers on December 7, 1930 at Wrigley Field), Savoldi was invited to re-join his fighting Irish team in a Notre Dame All-Star vs West/South All-Star game in the Los Angeles Coliseum. During the 20–7 victory, Savoldi scored three touchdowns.

During the All-Star game, he caught the eye of two famous spectators—wrestling promoter Billy Sandow and former world champion Ed "Strangler" Lewis. Savoldi agreed to meet Lewis and Sandow the following day at a local gym, and after an informal tryout in which Strangler Lewis proclaimed Savoldi the strongest man he had ever wrestled, Sandow eventually signed Savoldi to a contract in May 1931. Savoldi's debut match took place in February 1931, wrestling under the management of Puss Halbritter, and before formalizing his contract with Sandow, he appeared in a final charity football game in Kezar Stadium with the Savoldi all-stars.

As a wrestler, Savoldi became known for his finishing move, the flying dropkick (the pro wrestling move known today as simply the "dropkick"). From the early 1930s through the end of his career in 1950, Savoldi was credited as having originated the move but today that attribution is disputed between him and Abe Coleman.

Interpromotional wars were raging at the time, and on April 7, 1933 at Chicago Stadium, Savoldi was involved in a double cross on heavyweight champion Jim Londos. After a tangle by the ropes, referee Bob Managoff declared Savoldi the winner by pinfall and awarded him the title. Vigorous arguments were waged over whether Savoldi had truly won the match, and whether Londos' title had even been on the line. As a result, Savoldi and Managoff were suspended in some territories and the title change was not universally recognized. Londos continued to bill himself as world champion, while Savoldi went to the New York area claiming the same, until he was defeated by Jim Browning on June 12 at Yankee Stadium. After peace was made between rival promotions, a Londos/Savoldi rematch was held at Chicago Stadium on January 31, 1934. Londos won the contest.

Savoldi continued his wrestling career throughout the decade, touring New Zealand in 1936, appearing in Hawaii and Australia in 1937, and spending a lengthy time in Europe shortly before World War II.

Savoldi was approached by the U.S. government in 1942 about joining the war effort in an espionage role. He was chosen due to his fluency in multiple dialects of Italian, his expertise in hand-to-hand combat, and his deep knowledge of the Italian geography—including the interior of Benito Mussolini's compound. Savoldi was assigned to the Special Operations branch of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), with the code name "Sampson". He took part in missions in North Africa, Italy, and France during 1943–1945.

As a member the 2677th Regiment APO 512, Savoldi took part in multiple missions behind enemy lines. His service in Special Operations included at least three successful, high-visibility missions, all within the McGregor Project under the assumed identity of Giuseppe DeLeo. The real Giuseppe DeLeo was a captain in the Italian Army who had been captured in North Africa. The McGregor Project used Savoldi and other Italian and Italian-American contacts to expedite the Italian surrender to the Allies in 1943.

Savoldi's first operation (July–December 1943) was with Lt. Mike Burke, Lt. John Ringling North, and Peter Tompkins. Their mission was to escort Italian-American film producer Marcello Girosi (whose brother Massimo was commander of the Italian Navy) around the Mediterranean theater. Savoldi may have provided security for OSS chief "Wild Bill" Donovan, when he met with General George S. Patton in Palermo on 10 July 1943.

Savoldi's second operation as part of the ongoing McGregor Project was to extract Italian scientist Carlo Calosi from the German-occupied part of Italy. Calosi was the inventor of the highly effective magnetic trigger used in the Silvrifici Italiano Calosi (SIC) torpedo, which the Germans used extensively. Savoldi and colleagues Donald Downes and Andre Pacatte located Calosi in Rome. They moved him, his commander Admiral Minisini, their wives, several technicians, and secret documents on the SIC to the Amalfi Coast, where they were picked up by US forces. Calosi's party went to the US and developed countermeasures against the SIC for the Allies.

During his third major mission, Savoldi worked undercover in Naples, where he infiltrated the local Camorra and helped break up one of the largest black market operations in all of Italy. While undercover, Savoldi again assumed the identity of Giuseppe De Leo, but he worked in civilian clothing, posing as a rogue operator. Savoldi spoke Italian in several dialects as well as French, Spanish, and some German, and his dangerous work behind enemy lines was highly regarded according to several, now declassified, documents.

The 1946 book Cloak and Dagger by Alastair MacBain and Corey Ford includes an entire chapter titled "The Saga of Jumping Joe", recounting Savoldi's participation in the McGregor Project. The book was later adapted to film under the same title, Cloak and Dagger starring Gary Cooper. Savoldi's friend, former OSS agent, E. Michael Burke acted as technical advisor. A 1950 NBC radio show of the same title based on Ford and MacBain's book lasted 26 episodes.

Savoldi resumed his wrestling career before war's end, but his ability to move around in the ring would begin to diminish due to the onset of arthritis. He tried promoting in the Chicago area for a while between 1946 and 1948, and is credited with nicknaming and training the first African-American pro wrestling champion Bobo Brazil. Savoldi returned to the ring for a couple more years, wrestling his final match in 1950. He then went back to university to work towards earning his qualifications for a teacher's degree, and eventually started a program to mentor hard-to-reach kids before becoming a full-time science teacher at Henderson County High School in Henderson, Kentucky. Savoldi died in 1974 at the age of 65, and is buried in Henderson.

Lawrence Bruce Robertson

Lawrence Bruce Robertson was a Canadian surgeon who developed methods for and promoted the use of blood transfusions in battlefield surgery during World War I.

Robertson studied medicine at the University of Toronto, graduating in 1909. He interned at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto.

Robertson engaged in post-graduate training in Boston and New York, where he studied methods of blood transfusion at Bellevue Hospital, during a time when the process was not widely accepted for use in surgery. He returned to Canada in 1913, and worked at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, where he introduced the processes he had learned to other physicians. With the advent of war, Robertson enlisted in the armed forces in 1914.

In October 1915, Robertson used the syringe method of transfusion which he had learned in New York to perform a transfusion, providing blood to a patient suffering from shrapnel wounds. After four more successful transfusions over several months, he reported his results to Sir Walter Morley Fletcher, director of the Medical Research Committee. In 1916 he wrote an article for the British Medical Journal detailing his results, titled "The Transfusion of Whole Blood: A Suggestion for More Frequent Employment in War Surgery." This, along with improvements in the process developed by British physician Edward William Archibald, persuaded the British authorities to accept the practice of blood transfusion. In 1917 Robertson set up blood transfusion apparatus at Nomber 2 Casualty Clearing Station in France.

Following the war, Robertson returned to Toronto. In 1920, he was an orthopedic surgeon at Davisville Military Hospital.

Robertson died of pneumonia in 1923 at the age of 38.