The 1950s: Lifestyles and Social Trends: Deaths

THE 1950s: LIFESTYLES AND SOCIAL TRENDS: DEATHS

Jimmy (James Crawford) Angel, 57, soldier of fortune and gold prospector who discovered Angel Falls (world's highest waterfall) in Venezuela in 1929, 8 December 1956.

Lolita Sheldon Armour, 83, widow of meat packer J. Ogden Armour, Chicago society leader, 6 February 1953.

Judge George A, Batlett, 82, Reno judge who granted more than twenty thousand divorces, 1 June 1951.

Raymond Benjamin, 79, confidant of former president Herbert Hoover, grand exalted ruler of the Elks (1914-1915), 18 June 1952.

Oscar H. Bentson, 76, founder of Agriculture Department 4-H Clubs for farm youth, former director of Boy Scouts' Rural Scouting Service, 15 August 1951.

Dr. James Bernstein, 84, New York doctor who headed the Hebrew Sheltering and Immigrant Aid Society, 1932-1942, which helped refugees from Germany resettle in the United States, 28 June 1959.

Edna Blue, 49, a founder and international chairman of the Foster Parents' Plan for War Children, 24 March 1951.

William Bodine, 71, Philadelphia civic leader, 8 September 1959.

John Boettiger, 50, former son-in-law of Franklin D. Roosevelt, 31 October 1950.

Owen E. Brennan, 45, New Orleans restaurant owner and founder of Brennan s, 4 November 1955.

Israel A. Broadsword, 105, one of the last four GAR (Union) veterans of the Civil War, 25 July 1952.

Roger Lee Brodie, 16 months, weaker brother of surviving Rodney Brodie, Siamese twins joined at the tip of their skulls, 20 January 1953.

Edgar G. Brown, 56, National Negro Council founder-director, 9 April 1954.

Peaches Browning (Mrs. Francis Heenan Wilson), 46, whose brief marriage at age fifteen to Edward W. (" Daddy") Browning in 1926 caused widespread publicity, 23 August 1956.

Frank Buck, 66, big-game hunter who captured, not killed, his prey, 25 March 1950.

Clara Bradley Burdette, 98, founder of several national women's organizations allied with the General Federation of Women's Clubs, 6 January 1954.

Mathilda Burling, 78, founder (1925) of Gold Star Mothers (mothers of U.S. servicemen killed in World War I), 21 July 1958.

Allen Tibbals Burns, 77, social worker who aided U.S. immigrants and World War I famine victims, executive director of Community Chests and Councils of America, 9 March 1953.

William Jordon Bush, 107, one of the last seven veterans of the Confederate army, 11 November 1952.

Albert C. Chire, 62, Federal Housing Administration chief engineer (1934-1942) who set many of the technical standards for low-cost housing, 9 September 1958.

Rear Adm. Wat Tyler Cluverius, 77, survivor of the sinking of the Maine (1898), veteran of both world wars, 28 October 1952.

Edith Rubridge Cohoe, 75, who learned to fly a plane at age sixty-one, gaining the title of the "flying grand-mother," 1956.

Dr. James A. Colescott, 53, former imperial wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, which he disbanded in 1944, 11 January 1950.

Francis Dana Coman, 56, polar explorer, 28 January 1952,

Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge, 89, wealthy patron of chamber music ensembles and projects, 4 November 1953.

Grace Anna Goodhue Coolidge, 78, widow of former president Calvin Coolidge, 8 July 1957.

Ernest K. Coulter, 80, founder of the Big Brother movement to guide and protect boys, 1 May 1952.

Jacob Sechler Coxey, 97, "general" who led "Coxey's Army" of unemployed in a march on Washington from Massillon, Ohio, in 1894, 18 May 1951.

Louise E. du Pont Crowinshield, philanthropist active in restoring historic colonial buildings, 11 July 1958.

Grace Cummins, 71, social worker and Presbyterian leader, originator of released-time plan for giving children religious instruction outside public schools, 20 March 1953.

Neva R. Deardorff, 71, social-welfare statistical expert, former president of the Child Welfare League of America, 21 August 1958.

William I. Dotson, 62, attorney who was the first man recruited into Alcoholics Anonymous, 17 September 1954.

Jean McGinley Draper, 69, a leader in the national movement for the repeal of Prohibition, 26 September 1954.

Marjories Gould Drexel, granddaughter of Jay Gould, widow of Anthony J. Drexel, New York banker, 29 November 1955.

William J. (" Big Bill") Duffy, 69, Prohibition-era speak-easy operator who managed the Italian heavyweight Primo Carnera to the world title in the 1930s, 25 May 1952.

Lincoln Ellsworth, 71, explorer, first man to fly across both polar regions, 26 May 1951.

Fala, 11, late president Franklin D. Roosevelt's black Scottish terrier who sat in on many history-making conferences, 5 April 1952.

John Andrews Fitch, 78, labor and social relations professor at Columbia University's School for Social Work, 1917-1946, 15 June 1959.

Brig. Gen. Frederick S. Foltz, 94, oldest West Point alumnus who fought the northwestern Indians in the 1880s, 28 August 1952.

Katherine Ford, 53, Detroit society leader and wife of industrialist-music patron John B. Ford, Jr., 31 May 1953.

Capt. Ragnar T. Freng, 52, pilot of the first U.S. commercial passenger flight (1922), 9 July 1952.

Ruth Bernard Fromenson, 73, cofounder of Hadassah (Women's Zionist Organization of America), 26 January 1953.

Irene Lanhorne (Mrs. Charles Dana) Gibson, 83, the "Gibson Girl" made famous in the early 1900s as a model through illustrations by her husband-artist, 20 April 1956.

John Mark Glen, 91, social worker, general director of the Russell Sage Foundation (1907-1931), 20 April 1950.

Josephine Goldmark, 73, leader in movement for social legislation, 15 December 1950.

Waxley Gordon (Irving Wexler), 63, Prohibition-era bootlegger and underworld figure, 24 June 1952.

Hunter B. Grant, 67, founder of first Boy Scouts of America troop, 23 June 1954.

M. Louise Gross, 67, founder-president of Women's Moderation Union, foe of Prohibition, 26 November 1951.

Samuel W. Gumpertz, 84, circus showman, manager of Houdini and Ringling Circus, 22 June 1952.

Fleet Adm. William F. Halsey, 76, U.S. Navy leader in World War II whose flagship Missouri was the scene of Japan's formal surrender, 16 August 1959.

Ralph Warner Harbison, 83, national president of the Young Men's Christian Association, 12 December 1959.

James A. Hard, 111, oldest U.S. Civil War veteran, next-to-last survivor of the Union army, 11 March 1953.

Ira Hayes, 32, American Indian immortalized in the famous photograph of the flag-raising on Mountain Suribachi during the battle for Iwo Jima in World War II, 24 January 1955.

Capt. Hugh Herndon, Jr., 48, American Airlines official, the first pilot to fly the North Pacific nonstop (1931), 5 April 1952.

Duncan Hines, 78, gourmet and author of Adventures in Good Eating, 26 March 1959.

Burton Holmes, 88, lecturer, photographer, and originator of the travelogue, 22 July 1958.

Hunting Horse, 107, American Indian of the Kiowa tribe, last surviving Indian scout for Gen. George Armstrong Custer, 1 July 1953.

James R. Howard, 80, farmer and first president of the American Farm Bureau Federation, 27 January 1954.

Eddie Jacobson, 64, former partner of President Harry S Truman in a Kansas City haberdashery (1922), 25 October 1955.

Joseph Smith Jessop, 83, patriarch of the Short Creek, Arizona, colony of polygamists raided and broken up in July 1953, 1 September 1953.

Marguerite C. Johnson, 57, public safety director (fire, police, and communications departments), Dearborn, Michigan, and the only woman police commissioner in the United States, 3 March 1959.

Osa Johnson, 58, big-game hunter, author, and filmmaker who worked as a team with her late husband Martin Johnson, 7 January 1953.

Rosalie M. Jonas, 91, promoter of welfare projects of black children in Harlem, 4 January 1953.

Eugene Kinkle Jones, 69, executive secretary of the National Urban League, 11 January 1954.

Thomas Jesse Jones, 76, Welsh-born pioneer in black education and U.S. race relations, director emeritus of the Phelps-Stokes Fund, founder of the Commission on Interracial Cooperation, 5 January 1950.

Peggy Hopkins (Mrs. Andrew C. Meyers, née Marguerite Upton) Joyce, 62, former Ziegfeld Follies girl noted for six marriages, 12 June 1957,

Thomas A. Keen, inventor of the mechanical rabbit used in dog races, former associate of Al Capone, 5 February 1952.

Paul Underwood Kellogg, 79, pioneer social worker whose study of the Pittsburgh steel industry led to the end of the seven-day workweek, 1 November 1958.

Alvin Anthony (Shipwreck) Kelly, 67, Stuntman famous for flagpole sitting in the 1920s, 11 October 1952.

Iven C. Kincheloe, 30, U.S. Air Force captain, holder of the American altitude record (126,000 feet), and one of a small group picked for pioneer space travel, 26 July 1958.

Alfred Kinsey, 62, author of Sexual Behavior in the Human Male and Sexual Behavior in the Human Female, 25 August 1956.

Mabel Kittredge, 87, school-lunch crusader, a member of President Herbert Hoover's food committee in World War I,8 May 1955.

Eduard Christian Lindeman, 67, president of the National Conference of Social Work, 13 April 1953.

Samuel McCune Lindsay, 90, former Columbia University social legislation professor, housing and labor expert, 11 November 1959.

Katherine Ludington, 83, woman's suffrage leader, National League of Women Voters cofounder, 7 March 1953.

William A. Lundy, 109, one of the last three surviving Confederate veterans, 1 September 1957.

William Allen Magee, 106, one of the last three GAR survivors, bugler for Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman's Civil War army, 23 January 1953.

Benjamin C. Marsh, 74, a campaigner for public welfare causes and the first Washington lobbyist registered under a law passed in 1946, 30 December 1952.

Vivian C. McCollum, 57, Young Men's Christian Association president since 1956, 26 August 1959.

Vida Milholland, woman's suffrage leader during World War I, 29 November 1952.

Capt. Joseph McConnell, Jr., 32, world's leading jet ace, 25 August 1954.

Daisy Orr Miller, 78, president of the Animal Protective Union, known as the "dog detective" for locating lost animals, 2 December 1955.

Col, Zack T. Miller, 74, owner of the 101 Ranch (once the largest in Oklahoma), 3 January 1952.

Helen Moore, 92, retired social worker, editor of research publications for the Russell Sage Foundation, 2 August 1954.

James (" Dinty") Moore, 83, New York restaurateur known as the "Corned Beef and Cabbage King," 25 December 1952.

Joseph Morelli, 70, criminal, thought to have been responsible for the crime for which Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were convicted, 26 August 1950.

Anne Morgan, 78, daughter of banker John Pierpont Morgan, one of the world's richest women, and noted for her philanthropies in France, 29 January 1952.

Brig. Gen. Thomas Bentley Mott, 87, soldier who represented Gen. John Pershing on the staff of Marshall Ferdinand Foch in World War I, 17 January 1952.

Clem (Uncle Pike) Noble, 123, former slave, believed to have been the second oldest person in the world, 18 March 1954.

Howard Washington Odum, 70, New York City University sociologist who worked for better race relations, 8 November 1954.

Esther Gracie Ogden, 89, suffragette and former secretary of the Foreign Policy Association, 13 January 1956.

Joanne Connelly Ortez-Patino, 27, socialite, 2 July 1957.

Mary White Ovington, 86, one of the founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, 15 July 1951.

Isabel Townsend Pell, 51, American "Frederika" or girl with the blond hair who led Marquis resistance groups on the French Riviera during World War II, 5 June 1952.

Edwin McNeill Poteat, 60, Baptist minister, antisegregationist, chairman of Protestants and Other Americans United for Separation of Church and State, 17 December 1955.

Gladys (Mrs. Vernon) Presley, 42, mother of Elvis Presley, 14 August 1958.

Roger Preston, 54, Boston financier and civic leader, 28 November 1954.

Laura B. Prisk, 75, the "Mother of Flag Day," who crusaded to have 14 June declared a legal holiday, 30 May 1950.

Harold Purcell, 72, Roman Catholic editor-priest who promoted the $5-million City of St. Jude in Montgomery, Alabama, for the needy of all races, 22 October 1952.

Lawson Purdy, 95, New York City civil leader in housing reform, former president of Russeë Sage Foundation, National Municipal League, and Department of Taxes and Assessments (1906-1917), 30 August 1959.

Mabel Gilmore Reinecke, 65, U.S. collector of internal revenue during Presidents Warren G. Harding and Calvin Coolidge administrations, the first woman to receive a Presidential commission to a federal executive position, 8 March 1958.

Lady Ribblesdale (Mrs. Ava Willing Ribblesdale), 89, socialite, first wife of Col. John Jacob Astor and widow of Queen Victoria's lord-in-waiting whose title she renounced in 1940, 9 June 1958.

Thomas Evans Riddle, 107, one of five surviving U.S. Civil War veterans, 2 April 1954.

Edith Conway Ringling, 84, cofounder with husband Charles Ringling of the Ringling-Barnum and Bailey Circus, 23 September 1953.

Robert Edward Ringling, 52, chairman of Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus, 2 January 1950.

Edgar M. Robinson, 84, an organizer of the Boy Scouts of America and Young Men's Christian Association boys' leader, 9 April 1951.

John B. Sailing, 112, one of two surviving Civil War Confederate veterans, 16 March 1959.

Mabel Young Sanborn, 87, last surviving of Brigham Young's fifty-six children, 20 September 1950.

Aaron L. Sapiro, 75, attorney who sued Henry Ford for $1 million in 1927 for maligning Jews, 23 November 1959.

Clarence Saunders, 72, founder of first self-service grocery chain (Piggly Wiggly in Memphis, Tennessee) who made and lost two fortunes, 14 October 1953.

Alan Magee Scaife, 58, Pittsburgh industrialist and philanthropist (Scaife Foundation), 24 July 1958.

Arnold Schuster, 24, whose tip led to the arrest of bank robber Willie Sutton, 8 March 1952.

Walter E. (" Death Valley Scottie") Scott, 81, gold prospector whose spectacular spending sprees were financed secretly by a Chicago millionaire, 6 January 1954.

Grace Gallatin Thompson Seton, 83, author, lecturer, explorer, cofounder of the Camp Fire Girls in 1910, 19 March 1959.

Samuel James Seymour, 96, last known witness to the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln, 13 April 1956.

Dora Monness Shapiro, 72, philanthropist, Jewish welfare worker, 13 November 1952.

Mary Kingsbury Simkhovitch, 84, New York social worker, founder of Greenwich House, 15 December 1951.

Ida B. Wise Smith, 81, president of the Women's Christian Temperance Union (1933-1944), 16 February 1952.

Robert Holbrook Smith, 71, a founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, 16 November 1950.

Fred Snite, Jr., 44, polio victim who spent eighteen years in an iron lung, 12 November 1954.

Dr. Abraham Stone, 68, pioneer in birth control and marriage counseling, director of the Margaret Sänger Research Bureau, 3 July 1959.

Birdsall Sweet, 32, polio sufferer who spent nineteen years in an iron lung, 17 April 1950.

Adm. Robert A. Theobold, 73, commander of the Pearl Harbor destroyer flotilla at the time of the Japanese attack in 1941, 13 May 1957.

Chief Thunderwater (Oghema Niagara), 85, head of the Supreme Council of Indian Tribes in the United States and Canada, 10 June 1950.

Roger (" Terrible") Touhey, 61, gangster of the Prohibition era, 16 December 1959.

William D. Townsend, 106, one of the last five Confederate army survivors, 22 February 1953.

Florence Adele Vanderbilt Twombly, 98, only surviving grandchild of Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt, 10 April 1952.

Grace Wilson Vanderbilt, 82, widow of Brig. Gen. Cornelius Vanderbilt, society leader in New York City and Newport, 7 January 1953.

Harriet E. Vittum, 81, pioneer Chicago social worker and suffragette, 16 December 1953.

Florence Dahl Walrathe, 81, founder of the Cradle Society (1923) which worked to place infants for adoption, 7 November 1958.

Frieda Schiff Warburg, 82, widow of Felix Warburg, philanthropist who donated her New York City home as a Jewish museum, 1 September 1958.

Harry P. Wareham, 68, organizer of the first Community Chest drive, 11 June 1951.

Simon Taylor Webb, 83, Casey Jones fireman who leaped from the Illinois Central's Cannon Ball Express just before it crashed in 1900, killing its now-immortal engineer, Casey, 13 July 1957.

George S. Welch, 36, first U.S. Army pilot to shoot down a Japanese plane during the Pearl Harbor attack, 12 October 1954.

Bouck White, 76, who preached social revolution in his Church of the Social Revolution during World War I in New York, 7 January 1951.

William Fitzhugh Whitehouse, 76, Newport civic and society leader, 27 May 1955.

Brig. Gen. Wilbur Elliott Wilder, 95, oldest living holder of the Congressional Medal of Honor, which he won fighting the Apaches, 30 January 1952.

Charles Finn Williams, 79, Cincinnati philanthropist, art collector, Catholic lay leader, 11 September 1952.

Harison Williams, 80, utilities financier, husband of "best dressed" society leader Mona Strader Williams, 10 November 1953.

Walter Williams, 117, reputed to be the last survivor of the Civil War whose contention that he served in the Confederate army under Gen. John B. Hood was the subject of a newspaper controversy in 1959, 19 December 1959.

J. Finley Wilson, 70, grand exalted ruler of the Negro Elks (1922-1950), 19 February 1952.

Elma H. Wischmeier, 52, the millionth automobile traffic victim recorded since 1899, 21 December 1951.

Albert Woolson, 109, last surviving veteran of the Union army, 2 August 1956.