Born: October 9, 1899Died: August 28, 1978 Ohio connection: Resident Oberlin It was no accident that the most prominent figures in Bruce Catton’s Civil War histories were fellow Midwesterners and personal heroes Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant. Born in Petosky, Michigan, Catton attended Oberlin College and became a reporter after serving briefly in the …
Read More Bruce CattonBorn: April 26, 1820Died: February 12, 1871 Ohio connection: Birth Mount Healthy Alice Cary was born in 1820 in Mount Healthy, Ohio, on a homestead near Cincinnati. The daughter of Robert and Elizabeth Jessup Cary, she was the fourth of eleven children and a sister of author/poet Phoebe Cary. Alice, who was educated at home, developed a …
Read More Alice CaryBorn: November 21, 1925Died: December 4, 2010 Ohio connection: Former Resident Columbus Robert Wilburn Canzoneri was born in San Marcos, Texas, the son of Joe and Mabel (Barnett) Canzoneri. He received a B.A. degree from Mississippi College in 1948, an M.A. from the University of Mississippi in 1951, and a Ph.D. from Stanford University in 1965. He married Candyce Barnes. …
Read More Robert Wilburn CanzoneriBorn: December 27, 1896Died: March 18, 1956 Ohio connection: Birth Mansfield Louis Bromfield (birth name Lewis Brumfield), the son of Annette Maria Coulter Brumfield and Charles Brumfield, was a Pulitzer-Prize-winning novelist and a screenwriter, essayist, and conservationist. Bromfield, the author of thirty-three books of fiction and nonfiction may best be remembered for his early advocacy of land …
Read More Louis BromfieldBorn: 1960 Ohio connection: Former Resident Perrysburg Historian Douglas Brinkley was born in Atlanta, Georgia, but raised in Perrysburg, Ohio. He completed his bachelor’s degree at The Ohio State University and received his doctorate in U.S. Diplomatic History from Georgetown University in 1989. Brinkley then spent a year at both the U.S. Naval Academy and Princeton University …
Read More Douglas BrinkleyBorn: 1940 Ohio connection: Birth Newark Geoffrey Champion Ward, son of Frederick Champion and Duira Rachel (Baldinger) Ward, was born in 1940 in Newark, Ohio. He received a B.A. from Oberlin College in 1962. That same year, he was married to Diane Raines Keim, and they had two children, Nathan and Kelly. They were later divorced. …
Read More Ward, GeoffreyBorn: July 11, 1930 Died: December 20, 2020 Ohio connection: Birth Delaware Ezra F. Vogel, born in Delaware, Ohio, was the son of Joseph H. and Edith (Nachman) Vogel. He received his B.A. at Ohio Wesleyan University in 1950 and his Ph.D. in sociology at Harvard in 1958. He was the Henry Ford II Professor of …
Read More Vogel, EzraBorn: 1961 Ohio connection: Resident Cleveland “Bracingly honest…a perceptive and often piercing writer” is how The New York Times describes Thrity Umrigar, an Indian émigré who now calls Ohio home. Born in Bombay, Thrity left India for Ohio at the age of 21 in part because she felt she “would never be totally independent and would never discover …
Read More Umrigar, ThrityOhio connection: Resident Vermillion Marilou Suszko is a food writer whose work appears in newspapers and magazines. She is a regular contributor to the Cleveland Plain Dealer Food Section, the Sunday Magazine and Feast. Farms and Foods of Ohio: From Garden Gate to Dinner Plate is her first book. Suszko is a Level III graduate from Western Reserve School of Cooking. She is …
Read More Suszko, Marilou K.Born: 1934 Ohio connection: Birth Toledo Gloria Steinem, writer and feminist icon, was born in Toledo, Ohio. After a difficult childhood that included her parent’s divorce and her mother’s mental illness, Steinem won a scholarship to Smith College, where she studied government and politics, and graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1956. She soon broke off …
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