Growing up in Laurel Hill, Louisiana, Jones went to Southern University in Baton Rouge and, shortly after graduating, was drafted into the U.S. Army. It was 1943: World War II was in full swing, and Jones was assigned to the 494th Port Battalion, attached to the 6th Engineer Special Brigade that took part in Operation … Read more
From This is True for 1 May 2022
She only learned later in life that she was born a triplet; her two brothers didn’t survive. “My mother understood that being a girl was a disadvantage back then,” Hall said in 2019. “She did her absolute best to ensure that I achieved whatever they would have done. I attended elocution lessons, did piano and … Read more
From This is True for 25 April 2022
Growing up in small town Pennsylvania, Rupe’s father was a factory worker, and their home was modest. Rupe, who was white, was captivated by the music coming from a local black Baptist church. After his education — and working in shipbuilding in Los Angeles during World War II — Rupe decided to get into the … Read more
From This is True for 18 April 2022
As a boy growing up in Detroit, Mich., Uelsmann got interested in photography, and made it his lifelong profession. But he didn’t just shoot pictures, he specialized in manipulating them in a way that the era of Photoshop makes easy. By stacking negatives and using advanced darkroom techniques (such as using as many as a … Read more
From This is True for 10 April 2022
Growing up in Iowa, Fries listened to country music, and in 1950 moved to Omaha, Neb., taking a job at a local TV station as a commercial artist. He made $35 a week, and won an award from the Omaha Artists and Art Directors Club. That got the attention of an Omaha advertising agency, which … Read more
From This is True for 3 April 2022
Born in rural Texas, the Roach family moved to 150 miles east to Fort Worth when John was 4 — and he pretty much never left, not counting a stint in the U.S. Navy. He graduated from Texas Christian University there, majoring in physics and math, and returned two years later for his MBA, which … Read more
From This is True for 27 March 2022
A computer scientist, Wilhite led a team creating software compilers for the DECsystem-10 computer, particularly for BASIC and Fortran. Because it used a lot of the same computers, Wilhite was hired by Compu-Serv Network, Inc., owned by Golden United Life Insurance, and designed to provide computer time-sharing services to other businesses. The thing was, those … Read more
From This is True for 21 March 2022
After graduating high school in Buffalo, N.Y., Pinkel joined the U.S. Navy: World War II was in full swing. As part of his training, Pinkel studied at Cornell University, and became interested in biology and medicine. Once released he went back home to continue in school, getting his medical degree from the University of Buffalo, … Read more
From This is True for 13 March 2022
Born in West Virginia to Hungarian immigrant parents, Csuri attended Ohio State University — where, as Captain of the football team, he led OSU to its first national championship. Csuri was offered a contract in the NFL, but turned it down, joining the rest of the team in joining the military: it was 1942. He … Read more
From This is True for 6 March 2022
After obtaining a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering at Princeton in 1972, Boggs joined Xerox’s brand new research division, PARC — the Palo Alto Research Center in California. He found another new hire, Robert Metcalfe, in a lab trying to figure out how to send data packets down a wire. Boggs, who had a ham … Read more
From This is True for 27 February 2022