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Home , Alfred Eisenstaedt, Andrew Wyeth, Barbra Streisand, Doris Duke, Erma Bombeck, George Jessel (actor)

Introduction

What follows is a long list of names. Most of them may be familiar. Some may not be, The question is: what do all these people have in . You will notice that most are Americans, but a few are not. Many are dead, but some are not. The fact that they all made some contribution to society is not the solution. The List Study the list and try not to peek at the answer. The asterisks will be explained at the end too. I think you What do all these people have in will be surprised. common?

Jay G. Williams

Gwenfrewi Santes Press

Norman Bel Geddes King Camp Gillette What do all these people have in common? Isaac Gimbel W.T. Grant* Business people and industrialists Daniel Guggenheim Edward Harriman* John Jacob Astor* John Hertz (rental cars) Glen Bell (Taco Bell) Conrad Hilton William E. Boeing Johns Hopkins* Gail Borden Arde Bulova Steve Jobs (Apple Computers) David Burpee Howard Johnson* Adolphus Busch Mary Kay Andrew Carnegie* W.K. Kellogg* William James Chalmers* (of Allis-Chalmers) James Kemper (insurance) Walter Ray Kroc* (McDonalds) Ezra Cornell Sebastian Kresge Michael Dell Estée Lauder Herman Lay (Frito-Lay) Duke* Charles Lubin (Sara Lee) George Eastman* David Mcconnell (Avon) William Fargo* Rowland Macy Marshall Field* Andrew Mellon James Fisk* Charles Merrill (of Merrill-Lynch) James A. Folger (coffee) D. Ogden Mills * J.P. Morgan Henry C. Frick John Ringing North (circus) Alfred C. Fuller* (brushes) John Knudsen Northrop Ransom Olds* J.C. Penney Charles Post (cereals) John D. Rockefeller Ethel Barrymore Alvah Roebuck John Barrymore Colonel Harland Sanders Lionel Barrymore* Richard Sears* * William Steinway Sonny Levi Strauss Edwin Booth John and Clement Studebaker Robert Blake David Thomas (Wendy’s) John Bubbles* * Cornelius Vanderbilt* Raymond Burr* Matthew Vassar* Lon Chaney* John Wanamaker* * Montgomery Ward* Katherine Cornell T. J. Watson (IBM) Henry Wells (Wells-Fargo) Clara Bow* George Westinghouse Major Bowes* F. W. Woolworth Walter Brennan Philip Wrigley Sammy Davis Jr.* Entertainers: Actors, Dancers and Directors Isadora Duncan Bud Abbott* and Lou Costello* Tennessee Ernie Ford * Desi Arnez Astaire* * * * * W.D. Griffith P. T. Barnum Oliver Hardy Gabby Hayes* Jack Webb Rita Hayworth Lawrence Welk * * Natalie Wood Rock Hudson Darryl Zanuck George Jessel* Florenz Ziegfield Inventors, Naturalists, Scientists Peter Lawford* Stan Laurel John Abbott James Audubon Matthias Baldwin (locomotive) The Marx Brothers* Edward Bausch Raymond Massey Alexander Graham Bell Clarence Birdseye * Luther Burbank* Arthur Murray* Thomas Carvel Bernard Castro* Louis Chevrolet* Samuel Colt* John Deere* Ruth St. Denis Richard Drew (transparent tape) Phil Silvers* Thomas Edison* * * Kate Smith Michael Faraday Barbra Philo T. Farnsworth (T.V.) Ed Sullivan R. Buckminster Fuller Robert Fulton Charles Goodyear* Bette Nesmith Graham (white-out) Cesar Chavez* Elias Howe* Eugene Debs* Frederic Ives *(Photography) David Dubinsky* Candido Jacuzzi* Samuel Gompers* Edwin Land (camera) William Green Allan Lockheed* Jimmy Hoffa* Malcolm Lockheed Mary Harris "Mother" Jones Guglielmo Marconi John L. Lewis* Andre Michelin * Garrett Augustus Morgan* (traffic light) Arnold Ray Miller John Muir James Petrillo* Marlin Perkins Walter Reuther* James Ritty* (cash register) Philip Randolph Jacob Schick* Leonard Woodcock Christopher Lathan Sholer* (typewriter) Isaac M. (sewing machine)* Musicians Charles Steinmetz Nikola Tesla Earl Tupper (tupperware) * Horace Wells (anesthesia) * George Westinghouse Sidney Bechet* Eli Whitney* Lead Belly* Granville Woods* * Orville* and Wilbur Wright Irving * Linus Yale* (lock) William Billings* Frank Zamboni John Cage Labor Leaders George M. Cohan I.W. Abel Tony Boyle Aaron Copeland Walter Damrosch Jimmy Dorsey* Tommy Dorsey Thelonius Monk* * Morton Feldman* * Jan Peerce* Stephen Foster * * Ira Gershwin Sigmund Romberg * Arthur Rubenstein Arnold Schoenberg Arlo Guthrie Frank Sinatra* * John Philip Sousa * Victor Herbert Kate Smith Earl Hines Billy Holiday Bruno Walters Vladamir Horowitz * * Kurt Weill Gordon Jenkins Mary L.C. B. Zimbalist Scott Joplin Stan Kenton Public Figures Benedict Arnold* * Jimmy Byrnes John Chancellor Lowell Mason Henry Clay* George Clinton William F. “Buffalo Bill” Cody Eddie Rickenbacker* Clarence Darrow George Lincoln Rockwell Karl Rowe Horatio Seymour Orval Faubus Stewart Symington Millard Fillmore Wallis Warfield Simpson John Nance Garner Al Smith * * Jimmy "The Greek" Snyder Ben Franklin Henry Stanley Alexander Zachary Taylor* William Henry Harrison Harry S. Truman Jesse Helms William M. Tweed Wild Bill Hickok* Amy Vanderbilt Robert Ingersol* Martin Van Buren* Andrew Jackson* Booker T. Washington Oswald Jacoby (bridge) George Washington * * Oprah Winfrey Larry King Fernando Wood Fiorello LaGuardia Charles Lindberg * Reformers and Spiritual Leaders Huey Long Clare Booth Luce Susan B. Anthony Malcolm X Alice Bailey * Adin Ballou William McKinley Black Elk Golda Meier H.P. Blavatsky* Matthew Perry John Brown* Emily Post* Orestes Brownson* Alexander Campbell Visual Artists, Architects, Photographers Father Divine * Charles Addams Frederick Douglass Ansel Adams Peter Arno Charles G. Finney Albert Bierstadt* The Fox Sisters George Caleb Bingham* * William Lloyd Garrison Al Capp Marcus Garvey William Merritt Chase Sarah Grimke Frederick Church Ann Lee Thomas Cole Jiddu Krishnamurti John Singleton Copley Amiee Semple McPherson Ralph Adams Cram Jasper Cropsey William Miller Currier *and Ives* Dwight L. Moody* Arthur Bowen Davies Henry Steel Olcott Walt Disney Thomas Paine* Frank Doubleday* Oral Roberts Alfred Eisenstaedt Joseph Smith Beatrix Jones Farrand Billy Sunday* A.B. Frost* Lewis and Arthur Tappan Chester Gould * Marsden Hartley* Theodore Weld Childe Hassam Jemima Wilkinson* Edward Hicks Lucy Wright (Shakers) John Woolman Philip Hooker (architect)* Brigham Young Daniel Huntington Henry Inman* Writers and Publishers William Henry Jackson Jasper Johns Walt Kelly Sherwood Anderson Walter Lanz James Baldwin George Luks Frank L. Baum* Grandma Moses* James Beard (cooking) Thomas Nast* Josh Billings Georgia O'Keefe Erma Bombeck Ann Bradstreet Titian Peale George Brett (Macmillan, pres.) Joseph Brodsky* Raphaelle Peale William Cullen Bryant Jackson Pollack Thornton W. Burgess Ernie Pyle Edgar Rice Burroughs Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe Erskine Caldwell Truman Capote* Charles Shulz John Cheever* Agatha Christie * James Fenimore Cooper Edward Steichen Noel Coward* John Twachtman Hart Crane James Whistler Stephen Crane Grant Wood Robert Creeley Frank Lloyd Wright* Fanny Crosby * Cyrus Curtis* Chic Young George Curtis Charles Dana Jackson Richard Dana Sr. Henry James Alexander Bryan Johnson* Hilda Doolittle (H.D.) * (N.Y. Times) Theodore Dreiser George Kauffman Paul Dunbar Jack Kerouac Denise Levertov* William Faulkner Jack * Edna Ferber Amy Lowell* F. Scott Fitzgerald Edgar Lee Masters Carson McCullers Erle Stanley Gardner Herman Melville* William Lloyd Garrison H.L. Mencken Horace Greeley* Henry Miller Alex Haley Margaret Mitchell Fitz-Greene Halleck* Anais Nin Dashiell Hammett Clifford Odetts* James,* John,* and Fletcher* Harper Eugene O'Neill Joel Chandler Harris Thomas Paine* Lorenzo Hart S. J. Perelman Moss Hart Edgar Allan Poe Bret Harte Katherine Anne Porter William Randolph Hearst Lillian Hellman James Whitcomb Riley Edward Arlington Robinson Eric Hoffer* Carl Sandberg* William Saroyan* William Dean Howells Anne Sexton Langston Hughes Sam Shepard Washington Irving Christopher Isherwood Cornelia Otis Skinner Give up? According to the American National John Steinbeck Biography (1999), The Encyclopedia Britannica, Who’s Wallace Stevens Who in America and several other sources, not one of I. F. Stone these persons was awarded an earned degree by a Tom Stoppard college, university, or professional (art, theatre, etc.) school. Many took university level courses, but none Bayard Taylor graduated. Many, of course, received honorary degrees. Booth Tarkington A star indicates that the person dropped out of, or Sara Teasdale never attended, high school. It may be that there are T. B. Thorpe others on the list who did not graduate from high school for biographies are often vague about such matters. * Also, if I have missed the bestowing of a degree, I H.G. Welles apologize to all involved. * Phillis Wheatley So what does it all mean, this list of prominent people Walt Whitman* who succeeded in life without benefit of higher John Greenleaf Whittier* education? To me it means that “Credentialist” America Elie Wiesel has gotten it all wrong, that being qualified has less to do Laura Ingalls Wilder* with the number of degrees obtained and more with the P.G. Wodehouse quality of the person. We have come to prize above all Richard Wright* the academic stamp on the forehead. Without that basic B.A. one qualifies for little; without the high school diploma one qualifies for virtually nothing. We moan about the number of high school dropouts who still defy the system without recognizing that among their ranks are Frank Lloyd Wright, Thomas Nast, Carl Sandberg, and Ed Kroc, among others. We are certain that without a B.A. no one will get far, forgetting all about Bill Gates, 23 Ted Turner, Maya Angelou, and Aaron Copeland.

The argument is that the world is much more Television and the Web provide us with basic complicated now, that more and more education is news so that we don’t even have to read a newspaper needed in order to work in this complex world. But is every day. Computers correct our spelling and some of that true? In fact, in many ways life in our grammar and they open to all of us a wealth of America was more complex than it is today. For information once available only by traveling, sometimes instance, there was a time when, if you wanted to long distances, to a library or even to a foreign country. multiply or divide some numbers, you had to sit down Not all of the information on television or the Web is with pencil and paper and work out the answer. Today, reliable, but then not everything that has been taught in all you need is a little calculator and it does the job the classroom or put in print has been absolutely accurate without difficulty. Now there are, of course, nuclear either. The truth is we can now do research, take any one scientists who need much more mathematics than my of a variety of courses on the Internet, or even learn a calculator can provide, but if I am any example of how language via the computer, and, perhaps with a few the world goes today, that little calculator is quite books, educate ourselves. sufficient for most of us. Computers are complex instruments; yet I have Certainly Herman Melville found it no easier to met several young people who have mastered many of write a novel than does . Winslow Homer their secrets without benefit of any degrees at all. Some found it no easier to paint a picture than does Jasper of the most successful hackers in the world are largely Johns. Abraham Lincoln was as successful in facing self-taught. The same is true in many other areas as well. grave challenges as George W. Bush. In many ways, In truth, it has become easier and easier to educate manufacturing, marketing, and distribution were more oneself either on the Internet, with CD Roms. or at some complicated for Sears and Woolworth than they are for local educational institution where one can take what one their successors. On a more mundane level, technology likes without ever working toward a degree of any kind. has also made it much easier to be, for instance, a store clerk, secretary, or carpenter. Imagine clerks still adding Of course, it is true that today one needs up those long columns of numbers on a pad before you academic degrees to get ahead---one can statistically can pay for your groceries, or secretaries writing all prove how valuable such a degree is--- but that need is letters long hand, or carpenters building houses without based upon a self-fulfilling prophecy. As long as we benefit of power tools or concrete mixer trucks. believe that education at a certain level is essential, it will be. Should we believe it? Well, since I have been a part of higher education for the last forty-five years, I would like to think so. Certainly an excellent college or their own, without the oppression that education can university can provide educational opportunities not entail. easily found on one’s own. At least our vast and powerful educational establishment wants everyone to The great educational slogan triumphantly believe that. Nevertheless, much of what is offered could espoused by our present Administration is “No Child be acquired without benefit of the classroom and we, as a Left Behind,” a worthy sentiment no doubt if one is society, ought to recognize that fact. fleeing a burning building. But we must ask: behind what? Maybe some children really need and want to go Moreover, we should also recognize that in a different direction entirely. Must every child education as it is presented often bores some students to proceed in lockstep toward some supposedly ideal goal tears and, in fact, may “vaccinate” them against any real conjured up by our representatives in Washington? Do intellectual interest. It becomes a game that they play in they (or we) even have the least idea what our children order to get through courses without ever learning very will need to know forty years from now? much. Our society keeps young people in perpetual adolescence when it might be better for them to We assume that more education creates a society experience real life and work. While our children, at age that is more cultured and better informed, but we must 15, are still getting the basic rudiments of an education, seriously ask ourselves: with the radical increase in the Thomas Nast was already working, learning to become percentage of Americans with a college education since one of the great illustrators and cartoonists of his 1945 has our culture really improved? Are our novelists, generation. Was he deprived? No, I don’t think so. In poets, painters, and composers who now finish not only fact, he was so put off by school that had he been forced B.A.s but M.F.A.s as well really better than their less to endure it longer he might have been wounded for life. academically trained predecessors? Are our businessmen and women who now sport proudly their M.B.A.s really Because we have emphasized the certificate and better than their high school drop-out predecessors and the degree, that is what has become important. Genuine contemporaries? Certainly we can see vast advances in learning has taken a backseat to garnering credit hours in the sciences, in medicine, physics and all the various order to get that stamp of approval that employers “-ologies”, but those improvements should not blind us demand. If this list demonstrates anything, however, it is to the apparent lack of any real improvement in many that many of the most creative people, in the arts, in other areas or to the fact that science has created as many business, in science and technology have worked better problems for the world as it has solved. Moreover, many outside the system, learning on their own, creating on of our modern technological refinements rest upon the basic discoveries and inventions by people like Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Edison and the Wright 2. Paul Allen Brothers who had very little education at all. Founder and chairman, Vulcan So the list provided is just a contrarian reminder Type of Business: Media, telecommunications that our view of education may not conform to the Education: Dropped out of Washington State realities of life and that maybe, just maybe, we should College after two years Fun fact: He persuaded Bill Gates to drop out of rethink the whole process. It could very well be that in Harvard. They later founded Microsoft (MSFT) the attempt to provide a universal education of rigorous together. high quality we are actually stifling creativity and turning large segments of our society into anti-intellectuals. The 3. Richard Branson state of our culture today rather makes me think so. CEO, Virgin Group Jay G. Williams, A.B., M. Div., Ph.D. Type of Business: Travel, radio, TV, music, venture Professor of Religious Studies capital Hamilton College Education: No college degree Fun fact: He became an entrepreneur at age 16 with the creation of Student magazine. Here are a few more business executives for the list. These are taken from Yahoo. 4. Maverick Carter

CEO, LRMR Innovative Marketing & Branding 1. Dennis Albaugh Type of Business: Marketing

Education: 3.5 years of college at Chairman, Albaugh University and University of Akron combined Type of Business: Pesticides Quote: "Don't be afraid if you see an opportunity to Education: Associate's degree from Des Moines go and give it shot. You can finish school later; it's Area Community College always there." Fun fact: He has a collection of more than 100 classic Chevrolets

5. John Paul DeJoria Education: Dropped out of UCLA after three weeks Fun fact: He started his career working in the mail CEO, John Paul Mitchell Systems room of the William Morris Agency. Type of Business: -care products Education: No college 9. Bill Gates Fun fact: He started out selling greeting cards at age 9. Co-chair and Trustee, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation; Chairman, Microsoft (MSFT) 6. Michael Dell Type of Business: Philanthropy. Software. Education: Dropped out of Harvard Founder, chairman, and CEO Dell (DELL) Fun fact: As a schoolboy, he created a program that Type of Business: Computers allowed people to play tic-tac-toe on the Education: Attended University of Texas, Austin; computer. did not finish. Quote: "When I started our company, it was very 10. Mukesh "Micky" Jagtiani much an idea outside of the conventional wisdom, and if there were people telling me that it wasn't Chairman, Landmark International (Dubai) going to work, I wasn't really listening to them." Type of Business: Retailing Education: No college degree 7. Felix Dennis Fun fact: The billionaire mall developer flunked out of a London accounting school as a teenager and Founder and chairman, Alpha Media Group, worked as a taxi driver before becoming an formerly Dennis Publishing entrepreneur. Type of Business: Publishing (Maxim, The Week) Education: No college degree 11. Dean Kamen Fun fact: He wrote a biography and published a magazine about Bruce Lee; sales surged when the Founder and chairman, Segway martial arts star died suddenly in 1973. Type of Business: Motor vehicles Education: Dropped out of Worcester Polytechnic 8. Barry Diller Institute Fun fact: Kamen founded FIRST, a robotics Chairman and CEO of IAC/InterActiveCorp (IACI) competition for high school students. Type of Business: Media 12. David Oreck 15. Alfred Taubman

Founder, Oreck Founder, Taubman Centers (TCO). Philanthropist Type of Business: Vacuum cleaners Type of Business: Shopping malls Education: No college. At 17, enlisted in the army, Education: Attended the University of Michigan at and flew B-29 bombers during World War II Ann Arbor for three years but left to start a family Quote: "Things are never as bad as they seem to and his career the pessimist and never as good as they seem to Quote: "Become an expert in one fundamental area the optimist." of your market or business. No one starts out as a generalist."

13. Amancio Ortega Gaona 16. Ty Warner

President, Inditex Group Founder, Ty, Inc. Type of Business: Fashion retailing (Zara, Kiddy Type of Business: Toys (stuffed animals) Class, others). (A Coruna, ) Education: Dropped out of college to pursue a Education: No college career in acting. Later founded Ty Inc. Fun fact: Often cited as the richest man in Spain, he Fun fact: The plush animals his company reportedly has never given any media interviews manufactured retailed for only $5 in the 1990s, but Beanie Baby-mania drove prices up to $30 or more 14. Phillip Ruffin for the hard-to-get characters.

Owner, Treasure Island Type of Business: Casinos Education: Attended Washburn University for three years and Wichita State University but never got his degree. Quote: "You get the most experience from the business of life."