Birth Dates of Notable Kentuckians: January 19, 1939 - Phil Everly

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From The Kentucky Encyclopedia -
The pop singers known as the Everly Brothers were born in Brownie, Kentucky -- Donald Isaac on February 1, 1937, and Phil on January 19, 1939, the sons of country musicians Ike and Margaret (Embry) Everly. They made their radio debut as preteens on radio station KMA, Shenandoah, Iowa, working with their parents until they graduated from high school. In 1957 they joined the "Grand Ole Opry" in Nashville. The Everly Brothers sang close harmony in the style of Karl and Harty , but achieved their biggest hits with rockabilly numbers written by Felice and Boudleaux Bryant. Their records reached No. 1 on both country and pop charts. The brothers split up in 1973, but reunited ten years later.

CHARLES F. FABER, Entry Author

Slected Sources from UK Libraries:

Whitburn, J. (1993). Billboard top rock 'n' roll hits, 1957-1961. Los Angeles, CA: Rhino.
CD3548, Fine Arts Media Center

Classic country early 60's. (1999). Richmond, VA: Time-Life Music.
CD7330, Fine Arts Media Center

Classic country golden 50's. (1999). Richmond, VA: Time-Life Music.
CD7328, Fine Arts Media Center

Birth Dates of Notable Kentuckians: January 17, 1942 - Muhammad Ali

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From The Kentucky Encyclopedia -
"Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee, Ali's World Champion for time number three": So said Muhammad Ali, probably the quickest heavyweight boxer who ever fought, at the same time bringing style and showmanship to the ring. Ali held the World Heavyweight Championship during 1964-67, 1974-78, and 1978- 79.

Cassius Marcellus Clay -- as Ali was known before he joined the Nation of Islam in 1964 -- was born on January 17, 1942, in Louisville, to Marcellus and Odessa (Grady) Clay. The Clay family lived at 3302 Grand Avenue in the West End of Louisville. Ali took up boxing at age twelve. His first trainer was Joe Martin at Columbia Gym, who paid Ali four dollars each time one of his fights appeared on a local television program, " Tomorrow's Champions." Ali then switched to trainer Fred Stoner, joining Stoner's camp at the Grace Community Center. He attended Central High School in Louisville, where his studies suffered because of his intense involvement with boxing.

Ali won six Golden Gloves tournaments in Kentucky in weight classes from light to welter to heavy; the total number of his amateur fights is unknown. In 1959 and again in 1960 he won the Light Heavyweight National Golden Gloves and National AAU tournaments. As AAU champion he was invited to the Olympic trials, and became the light heavyweight entry for the United States. He defeated "Ziggy" Pietrzykowski of Poland for the gold medal in 1960.

On October 29, 1960, Ali made his first professional appearance, winning over Tunney Hunsaker by a decision. Needing money to repair his parents' home, he had signed for the fight himself. Ali then contracted to be managed by a group of Louisville millionaires led by William Faversham and remained with them until 1967. His promoters had scheduled training with fighter Archie Moore, but Ali quickly left and hired Angelo Dundee to manage and train him as a professional. Ali worked his way up the ranks, and on February 25, 1964, he scored a seventh-round knockout against Sonny Liston to win the world heavyweight championship.

After a swing through Europe, where he defeated all contenders, Ali received an army induction notice. Although Ali was offered both a commission and a support services assignment, he refused induction for religious reasons. He was sentenced to five years in prison and a $10,000 fine. The World Boxing Association then stripped him of his title on April 28, 1967, and awarded it to "Smokin"' Joe Frazier, the beginning of a bitter feud between the two fighters. Although Ali did not serve jail time, he was barred from boxing, his livelihood.

During his three-year exile from the ring, Ali toured colleges and universities making speeches about civil rights. On June 20, 1970, the U.S. Supreme Court decided in his favor in the army induction case, and Atlanta gave him his first boxing license, which effectively ended the exile. In his first return bout, held amidst protest on October 26, 1970, Ali knocked Jerry Quarry out in three rounds. The feud with Frazier festered, and the first Ali- Frazier bout was scheduled -- Ali's first million-dollar purse and his chance to win back the world heavyweight title. The fight, outstanding in boxing history, was held in New York City on March 8, 1971. Frazier won the fifteen- round decision and retained the championship. Ali suffered his second loss, as well as a broken jaw, at the hands of Ken Norton on March 31, 1973.

Ali met George Foreman, then the champion, on October 30, 1974. This fight, called the "Rumble in the Jungle," took place in Kinshasa, Zaire, and featured a $5 million purse for each man. Ali changed from his famous shuffle, dance, and rope-a-dope style, and stood toe-to-toe with the hard-punching Foreman. The result was a worn-down Foreman whom Ali knocked out in the eighth round to reclaim the championship. The hard-driven Frazier, however, was still there to challenge for the title. Perhaps the greatest heavyweight fight in history was the "Thrilla in Manila" between Ali and Frazier on September 30, 1975. The fight was an action-packed brawl that finally ended when Frazier could not answer the bell for the fifteenth round. Ali lost the title on February 15, 1978, by decision to Leon Spinks, then regained it from him on September 15, 1978, by unanimous decision, becoming world heavyweight champion for the third time. Ali last fought on October 2, 1980, when he was knocked out by Larry Holmes in the eleventh round. The fights took their toll, as Ali developed Parkinson's syndrome.

Ali has been married four times, first to Sonji Rei. He then married Belinda Boyd (Kalilah Tolona) in April 1967; they had three daughters and a son. In June 1977, he married Veronica Porshe; in November 1986, Yolanda Williams. On occasion, Ali returns to Louisville to visit parents and friends. His autobiography, The Greatest (1975), was written with Richard Durham.

JOEL T. SATTERLY, Entry Author

Selected Sources from UK Libraries:

Bingham, H., & Amthor, D. (1993). Muhammed Ali : A thirty year journey. New York: Simon & Schuster.
GV1132.A44 B56 1993, Special Collections Research Center

Hauser, T. (1992). Muhammad Ali : His life and times (1st Touchstone ed.). New York: Simon & Schuster.
GV1132.A44 H38 1991, Special Collections Research Center

Gorn, E. (1995). Muhammad Ali, the people's champ (Sport and society). Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
GV1132.A44 M85 1995, Young Library - 4th Floor

Bingham, H., & Wallace, M. (2000). Muhammad Ali's greatest fight : Cassius Clay vs. the United States of America. New York: M. Evans and.
GV1132.A44 B56 2000, Special Collections Research Center

Other Sources:

Muhammad Ali Center in Louisville, KY

Birth Dates of Notable Kentuckians: January 11, 1870 - Alice Hegan Rice

Image from Wikipedia.com

From The Kentucky Encyclopedia -
Alice Caldwell (Hegan) Rice, author, was born in Shelbyville, Kentucky , on January 11, 1870, to Samuel Watson and Sallie P. (Caldwell) Hegan. She attended a private school in Shelbyville and Miss Hampton's College in Louisville, where she began writing. During that time she wrote a parody of Reveries Of A Bachelor by Ik Marvel, which the Louisville Courier-journal published. She and several other women in Louisville organized an authors' club, where they discussed writing and read their works aloud.

At a time when reformers and settlement house workers were calling attention to the living conditions of the urban poor, Hegan began volunteer social work in a truck-farming area south of Oak Street and west of Sixth Street known as the Cabbage Patch. There she taught a boys' Sunday school class at a city mission of the First Christian Church. Inspired by a resident of the desperately poor area, Mary Bass, Hegan transformed her into the fictional Mrs. Wiggs, a widow with five children who lived in dire poverty and had many misfortunes, but who faced life with steadfastness, cheerfulness, and hope. Mrs. Wiggs took in washing and her children -- Jimmy, Billy, Asia, Australia, and Europena -- sold kindling to try to forestall the landlord from foreclosing on the family home. In 1901 Hegan introduced her novel Mrs. Wiggs Of The Cabbage Patch to the authors' club. She submitted her manuscript to a publisher, and within six months of publication, 10,000 copies a month were being printed -- later 40,000 copies per month. The novel was a best-seller for two years. It was translated into French, Spanish, Norwegian, Danish, German, Japanese, and braille. Mrs. Wiggs was such an international success that Louisvillian Anne Crawford Flexner helped adapt the novel for a stage play presented at Macauley's Theatre in 1903. The Courier-journal proclaimed the play "a distinct success," and it ran for seven years in the United States and for two in England. Mrs. Wiggs also spawned four movies. The first two (1919 and 1926) were silent movies. The 1934 film, featuring W.C. Fields and Zasu Pitts, had its world premiere at the Rialto Theatre on Fourth Street in Louisville. It was proclaimed "the literary event of the season." A fourth film adaptation premiered in December 1942 at the Strand Theater in Louisville, and Louisville actress Fay Bainter won an Oscar for her portrayal of Mrs. Wiggs in this version. On December 18, 1902, Hegan married Cale Young Rice , a poet, playwright, and philosopher from Louisville. Samuel McClure, publisher of Mcclure's Magazine, bought Cale Rice's first book soon after the wedding and invited the Rices to accompany him on a vacation trip to Europe. Alice Rice's novel Sandy (1905) was a fictional portrayal of McClure and his career. On the trip, she met and formed a friendship with social reformer and muckraker Ida Tarbell. Alice Rice wrote twenty books, including several sequels to Mrs. Wiggs, most notably Lovey Mary (1903). Her personal favorite was Mr. Opp (1909), in which the title character to all outsiders appeared a failure, yet saw himself as a success in the world, one who refused to recognize defeat. Mrs. Wiggs's observation at the end of the novel expressed this kind of optimism: "Looks like ever'thing in the world comes right, if we jes' wait long enough!" Rice wrote in her autobiography The Inky Way (1940) That She Did Not Want To Record Life's Tragedy. Rather She Wanted Her Autobiography "to Follow, Through A Long life, the course of an inky way that happened to follow a flowery path." Her posthumously published work Happiness Road was described by the New York Herald Tribune as "an exercise in the discipline of happiness." The Rices built a house in 1910 at 1444 St. James Court, where for thirty years she played the role of gracious hostess. Throughout her life, Rice was involved in philanthropic work. In 1910 Louise Marshall founded the Cabbage Patch Settlement on Sixth Street, a settlement house to reach out to the poor families in the urban neighborhood. Rice was a member of its first board. During World War I, she served as a hospital volunteer at Camp Zachary Taylor . She used that experience as a source for her 1921 novel Quin. Rice supported prohibition and served on the Kentucky State Committee of Law Enforcement. During the 1920s, Rice collaborated with her husband on two books of short stories. In the 1930s the Rices suffered illness and financial reversals, and her works from that time were written under the burden of financial necessity: Mr. Pete & Co. (1933), a picaresque tale of the Louisville waterfront; Passionate Follies (1936), written with her husband; My Pillow Book (1937), a book of devotions and comments on life. In 1937 she received an honorary doctor of literature degree from the University of Louisville. Rice died on February 10, 1942, and was buried in Cave Hill Cemetery in Louisville. GAIL HENSON, Entry Author Selected Sources from UK Libraries: Rice, Alice Caldwell Hegan. Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch. New York: Published by the Century, 1901. Print. F R36 1st ed., Special Collections Research Center - Fiction Collection Boewe, Mary. Beyond the Cabbage Patch : The Literary World of Alice Hegan Rice. Louisville: Butler, 2010. Print. PS3535.I2145 Z6 2010, Young Library - 5th Floor Rice, Alice Caldwell Hegan. Alice Caldwell Hegan Rice Notebooks. Print. 50M32, Special Collections Research Center - Manuscripts Collection