Jane Tucker was born in Alabama in 1927. When her father left the family, Jane moved into her grandparents’ home in Lineville with her mother, Iris, and her sister, Betty. As a teenager Jane got a job making a dollar a day in a five and ten cent…
William Wallace, Sr., born on April 1, 1922, grew up in Millen, Georgia. After graduating high school, he joined the Army Air Corps on October 14, 1939, and became part of the 16th bomb squadron. A couple of weeks before World War II officially…
Richard B. Russell Jr. was an American politician who served as governor of Georgia and a U.S. senator during the middle decades of the 20th century. Born on November 2, 1897, in Winder Georgia, Russell was guided into a political career by his…
Edith Bond was born on a farm in the small town of Yeomans, Georgia in 1921. The youngest of twelve siblings, Edith grew up during the Great Depression in a wooden house with a three-sided porch and tin roof. She was particularly close with her…
Crawford Hicks was born in Leitchfield, Kentucky in 1921, three years after the end of World War I. Growing up on a ten-acre farm outside of Louisville, Hicks dreamed of one day flying. He read everything he could find about the pilots who flew…
Born on September 23rd, 1884, outside of Forsyth, Georgia, Eugene Talmadge would dominate the state’s politics for decades. As a young man, Talmadge attended the University of Georgia and graduated from the university’s law school in 1909. He…
Born on August 9th, 1913 in Telfair County, Herman Talmadge carried on the political legacy of his father, Eugene Talmadge. He served as governor of Georgia for a brief time in early 1947, following his father’s death, and then again from 1948 to…
Born on March 1st, 1890, in Atlanta, Georgia, William Hartsfield dedicated his life to the betterment of his hometown and community. During his six terms as mayor of Atlanta, Hartsfield helped guide the city through tremendous change and growth. Due…
Born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1948, Susan Heinemann Berman is the daughter of German-Jewish Holocaust survivors. Her mother, Ruth Simon Heinemann, escaped Germany via Kindertransport to England along with her sister Hildegard Simon Gernsheimer in…
Hank Van Driel was born in May 1934 in Schiedam, Holland, a suburb of Rotterdam. He was six years old when the war was brought to the Netherlands and grew up during the time of German occupation. The occupation affected his family’s entire…
Before the first American troops stormed Omaha beach on D-Day, June 6, 1944, 19-year-old Naval electrician Gerald McDonnell felt his heart speed up as his metal-clad barge scraped against the sand. At the signal from his commanding officer, McDonnell…
Grace Thorpe was born on December 10, 1921, in Yale, Oklahoma. She was the daughter of famous American Indian Olympic athlete James Thorpe and Iva Margaret Miller Thorpe. Grace lived in Oklahoma, Chicago, and California as a child. In 1943 at age 21…
Faye (Johnson) Edwards was born February 5th, 1923, in Winfield, West Virginia. In this small coal mining town, her father was killed in a coal mining accident and her mother later remarried. As Edwards got older, she moved to Milton, West Virginia,…
Judy Coker Benowitz was born in Monroe, Georgia, in 1949 to parents Ivah Ree and Dan Coker. As a child, she rode her bicycle along Highway 11 and swam with her cousins in their pond. It was not until she was an adult that she began to research her…
Born in New York City in 1954, Jackie Sherman learned that her mother, Doris Regensburger, had to flee Nazi Germany as a young teenager. Along with her parents, Alfred and Johanna Regensburger, Doris and her sister, Marianne, emigrated to the United…
Anna “Anke” van de Steenhoven Boon was born in Jakarta, Indonesia, on October 11th, 1923, to Dutch parents. At the time, Indonesia was a colony of Holland in the East Indies. Anna and her family lived a very comfortable life in a house with servants.…
Born on January 23rd, 1926, in Dunkirk, New York, Mel Price grew up during the Great Depression. His father worked at the American Locomotive Company, while his mother took care of the household. During his childhood, Melvin's family faced…
Hilbert Margol was the eldest of twin boys born on February 22, 1924, to a Jewish family in Jacksonville, Florida. The Margols ran a clothing store in Jacksonville's Black business district, and Hilbert played football in middle and high school.…
Reverend Fahed Abu-Akel was born April 13, 1944, to Labib, a farmer and former British Army soldier, and Adla. Fahed is the seventh of eight children and grew up in a Palestinian Arab village near the modern city of Acre, Israel. Their family…
Carl Vinson committed his long career in the U.S. House of Representatives to the defense and security of our nation. A Georgia native, he served as a congressman for 25 consecutive terms, the longest tenure in U.S. history, and helped pass…
Born in New York City in 1929, Eugene Kimling grew up in a German immigrant family. Although he and his family were Christians, he spent much of his early childhood living in a German-Jewish community on Coney Island. While visiting Germany in…
Born in 1919, Lorenzo Wallace grew up on Chestnut Street in Southwest Atlanta near the campus of Atlanta University. His father, Edward, attended Meharry Medical College and was one of the first black surgeons in Atlanta. His mother, Birdie, attended…
Tooken Cade was born Dolores Ann Moran in Detroit, Michigan, in 1924. After her parents divorced, she lived with her mother and an aunt. She attended St. Mary’s Academy in Windsor, Ontario, and during her freshman year at the University of Detroit,…
Born in Frankfurt, Germany, in 1926, Herbert Kohn could trace his family’s lineage in the region back to the 1400s. His father, Leo, was a World War I veteran and worked in the leather business. After Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933, Kohn was…
Born in Poland in 1922, Norbert Friedman grew up in a working-class family in Krakow. His father, Josef, was a kosher butcher, and his mother, Gusta, took care of Friedman and his younger brother. In 1935, Poland passed anti-Jewish laws, including…
Born in 1928, Tosia (Szechter) Schneider grew up in Horodenka, Poland, with her parents and younger brother, Julek. When the Second World War began in 1939, Schneider’s childhood came to a hasty end as the Soviets took control of her town. As the war…
Jimmy Doi was born in California in 1925. He and his four older siblings were Nisei, first generation Americans born to parents who emigrated from Japan and ran a tomato farm in Oxnard, California. When Doi’s parents decided to return to Japan in…
Born into a family of sharecroppers in Chipley, Georgia, in 1924, Alton Cadenhead developed an early interest in engineering. He even attempted to harness energy from a creek that flowed near his home by installing a homemade paddle wheel. When the…
Born in 1918, Guy Gunter grew up the son of a policeman in the East Lake community of Atlanta. He graduated from Tech High School and studied electrical engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He never graduated because he had already…
Born in Prichard, Alabama, in 1922, Hillard Pouncy moved into his grandparents’ home in Eufaula in 1930. They needed support around the house, and Pouncy’s parents decided he should be the one to help them. After his grandfather retired, Pouncy took…
Louvinia Jordan was born on a farm in Ether, North Carolina, in 1922. She worked in the garden and took care of her family’s animals such as a guinea pig and a pet squirrel. Jordan’s father, Cornelius Vanderbilt Kerns, was a farmer and gifted…
William A. Scott III moved with his family to Atlanta in 1928 at the age of five. His father founded the Atlanta Daily World, one of the most influential African American newspapers in the nation. W. A., as he was known, studied business…
A lifelong resident of Atlanta, David Jacobi was born in 1962. In March 2017 he came to Kennesaw State University to share the story of his family through the Legacy Series oral history program. David is the son of a German Holocaust survivor,…
Anna Eleanor Roosevelt was born in New York City on October 11, 1884 to a wealthy family. Her father, Elliott Roosevelt, was the younger brother of President Theodore Roosevelt, and her mother, Anna Hall, was a member of the prominent Livingston…
Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) was the 32nd President of the United States. He served in this capacity for twelve years. Roosevelt is remembered as a great political and social mind and faced some of the nation's most challenging issues.…
In present-day Ukraine, Hershel Greenblat was born with the name Grischa Grinblat in 1941. Prior to World War II, his mother was born in Kremenchug, Ukraine and his father was born in Lublin, Poland. They married in a synagogue shortly after the…
Alan Davies was born on March 27, 1932 in East London. His father, Frederick Davies, studied to become a London taxi driver, and his mother, Florence Coultart, worked for a cigar manufacturer. As a child, Davies was an avid soccer player and member…
Edward Francell was born into a secular Jewish family in Paris in 1934, but his mother was descended from an old Jewish family based in Columbus, Georgia. After the Nazis came to power in Germany, Francell and his family immigrated to the United…
Born in Denmark in 1952, Gitte Toben immigrated to the United States in 1979. Although her father remained mostly silent about his life during the Nazi occupation of Denmark, Toben grew up hearing stories from her grandparents about her father,…
Born in 1935, June Chandler grew up outside London in the borough of Enfield. During the Second World War, her neighborhood sustained heavy German bombing, and Chandler had to evacuate to the north. After the war she married Laverne "Jeff" Chandler,…
Larry Lesser was born in Warsaw, Poland, in 1931. His birth name was Eliezer Lazarowic, and he was known by the Polish nickname Lolek as a child. His father, Berril Lazarowic was a butcher and store owner, and his mother Cyla raised Larry along with…