FAMOUS AMERICANS BORN ON FEBRUARY 20TH

 ANGELINA EMILY GRIMKE was born in 1805, in Charleston, South Carolina.  She was an American politician, lawyer, abolitionist and suffragist.  She was born into an elite, slave-holding family that believed their girls should do everything the proper way.  This was not acceptable to the inquisitive and outspoken girl.  She often offended her traditionalist family.  She wouldn’t join their Episcopalian Church, but rather converted to the Presbyterian faith.  She eventually broke with them and took up with the Quakers, and also decided that Philadelphia, not the South, was the place for her to be.   She was very outspoken against the institution of slavery.  She eventually became impatient with the slow response of the Quakers to the slavery issue, becoming more extreme in her views on the subject.  She read periodicals such as The Emancipator and Garrison’s The Liberator.  She joined the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society in 1835.   She spoke before the Massachusetts State Legislature in 1837 – the first woman ever to do so.  She toured the Northeast and gave abolitionist and feminist lectures.  In 1838, she married Theodore Dwight Weld, an abolitionist leader.   He encouraged her activism, though not long after her health began to fail.  (d. 1874)

 ANSEL EASTON ADAMS was born in 1902, in San Francisco, California.  He was a photographer and an environmentalist.  He is best known for his black and white photographs of the American West, especially in Yosemite National Park.  With Fred Archer he developed the zone system as a way to figure proper exposure and adjust the content of the final photo.  He used mostly large-format cameras because they helped insure the sharpness in his images.  Along with photographers Edward Weston and Imogien Cunningham he founded the Groupf/64, and also the Museum of Modern Art’s department of photography.  He has memories of the 1906, when he was four years old, of being slammed into a garden wall and breaking his nose.  His nose remained crooked all his life.   His parents raised him to follow the ideas of Ralph Waldo Emerson – to live modestly, morally, and be socially responsible to man and nature.  Adams said his philosophy was as follows – “I believe in beauty, I believe in stones and water, air and soil, people and their future and their fate.”  He wanted to reveal the beauty of nature to others.  His first photographs were published in 1921, and in 1927 he contracted for his first portfolio.   His career as a photographer lasted 60 years.  He died on April 22, 1984, at the age of 82. 

 BEVERLY LOUISE NEILL (state name;  AMANDA BLAKE) was born in Buffalo, New York in 1929.  She worked as a telephone operator before commencing her almost 40 years as an actress.   She is most well known as Miss Kitty on the long-running television series, Gunsmoke (1958-1966).   After Gunsmoke she semi-retired, Blake settled in Phoenix.  She was a great lover of animals, and joined in with others of the same mind-set to form the Arizona Animal Welfare League in 1971.  This organization is still in operation today and the largest ‘no kill’ animal shelter in Arizona.  She helped also to start up the Performing Animal Welfare Society (PAWS), putting much money and time in support of this effort.  The Amanda Blake Memorial Wildlife Refuge opened in Herald, California in 1997.  Much of her adult life she was a two-to-three pack a day cigarette smoker.  In 1980 she was diagnosed with mouth cancer.  She spoke out for warning labels on cigarette packages to the U.S. House of Representatives.  Blake died on August 16, 1989, of oral cancer.  She was 60 years old.

 CHARLES WADE BARKLEY was born in 1963, in Leeds, Alabama.  He is nicknamed ‘Sir Charles’ for his aggressive and outspoken ways, and also ‘The Round Mound of Rebound’ for his unusual build and his talent.  He was one of the National Basketball Association’s most dominating power forward.  Since his retirement as a basketball player, Barkley has had a successful career as an Emmy Award-winning color commentator on basketball.  He works with Turner Network Television.  His career with the NBA spanned sixteen years.   He’s been one of the most controversial, outspoken and dominating players in basketball history.  After basketball, Barkley has worked as a studio analyst for Turner Network Television (TNT). appearing during pre-game or halftime shows.  He has written for Sports Illustrated, has written a couple of books, May Be Wrong, But I Doubt It (2002), and Who’s Afraid of a Large Black Man?”  (2005).   

 KURT DONALD COBAIN was born in 1967, in Aberdeen, Washington.  Cobain was a singer-songwriter and a musician, however he is best known as lead singer and guitarist for the band Nirvana.  Cobain was born into a family of musicians – his uncle was in a band named Beachcombers, his aunt played guitar with different bands in Aberdeen, and his great-uncle was an Irish tenor.  It was evident from an early that Kurt had musical talent.   Nirvana was a subgenre of alternative rock music called grunge.  “Nirvana was considered the ‘flagship band’ of Generation X. Cobain and Courtney Love were married in 1992.   The couple’s daughter, Frances Bean, was born on August 18, 1992.   During the last years of his life he had struggles with heroin addition, illness and depression.  His death on April 8, 1994, was officially ruled a suicide.

 CYNTHIA ANN “CINDY” CRAWFORD was born in 1966, in DeKalb, Illinois.  She was an American model; her trademark being a mole just above her lip.  She has been on hundreds of magazine covers (Vogue, W. People, Harper’s Bazaar, Elle, Cosmopolitan, and Allure).  She was #3 on VH1’s 40 Hottest Hotties of the 90s.  Crawford was one of the most popular supermodels during the 1980s-1990s.   Her success as a model led to television and movie roles.  She was host of MTV’s House of Style, and was in famous Pepsi ads.  In 1995 she had her first movie role in   Fair Game.  She’s been in other minor acting roles over the years.   Crawford posed nude for Playboy in July 1888.    She retired in 2000.  On May 29, 1998 she married Rande Gerber and they have two children.   They reside in Malibu, California.   Since her brother died young from leukemia, she has made childhood leukemia the focus of her charity work, donating proceeds from her calendar to medical research in that area.  Cindy also  supports the Ronald McDonald House Charities.  She is on the Honorary Committee of the California Wildlife Center.

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