John Herschel Glenn, Jr was born July 18, 1921 in Cambridge, Ohio, to John Herschel Glenn and Clara Theresa. He was raised in New Concord, Ohio. Glenn studied chemistry at Muskingum College, and received his private pilot's license as physics course credit in 1941. When the Attack on Pearl Harbor brought the United States into World War II, he dropped out of college and enlisted in the U.S. Army Air Corps. However, the Army did not call him up, and in March 1942 he enlisted as a United States Navy aviation cadet. He trained at Naval Air Station Olathe, where he made his first solo flight in a military aircraft. In 1943, during advanced training at the Naval Air Station Corpus Christi, he was reassigned to the United States Marine Corps. He flew 59 combat missions in the South Pacific and saw action over the Marshall Islands. In 1945, he was assigned to Naval Air Station Patuxent River, Maryland, where he was promoted to captain shortly before the war ended.

Following the war, Glenn flew patrol missions in North China with VMF-218, until his squadron was transferred to Guam. He became a flight instructor at Naval Air Station Corpus Christi, Texas in 1948, then attended the amphibious warfare school and received a staff assignment. Glenn returned to the Naval Air Station Patuxent River and was appointed to the Test Pilot School. He served as an armament officer, flying planes to high altitude and testing their cannons and machine guns. On July 16, 1957, Glenn completed the first supersonic transcontinental flight in a Vought F8U-1 Crusader. The flight from NAS Los Alamitos, California to Floyd Bennett Field, New York took 3 hours, 23 minutes and 8.4 seconds.

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "John Glenn"

Robert Lee Frost was born March 26, 1874 in San Francisco, CA. He was a highly regarded poet for his realistic depictions of rural life and his command of American colloquial speech. His work frequently employed settings from rural life in New England in the early twentieth century, using them to examine complex social and philosophical themes. A popular and often-quoted poet, Frost was honored frequently during his lifetime, receiving four Pulitzer Prizes for Poetry.

Frost's father was a teacher and later an editor of the San Francisco Evening Bulletin. After his father's death in 1885, the family moved across the country to Lawrence, Massachusetts under the patronage of (Robert's grandfather) William Frost, Sr., who was an overseer at a New England mill. Frost graduated from Lawrence High School in 1892. Despite his later association with rural life, Frost grew up in the city, and published his first poem in his high school's magazine. He attended Dartmouth College for two months, long enough to be accepted into the Theta Delta Chi fraternity. Frost returned home to teach and to work at various jobs including helping his mother teach her class of unruly boys, delivering newspapers, and working in a factory as a light bulb filament changer.

In 1894 he sold his first poem, "My Butterfly: An Elegy" for fifteen dollars. Frost then went on an excursion to the Great Dismal Swamp in Virginia, and asked Elinor Miriam White to marry him again upon his return; they were married at Harvard University, where Frost attended liberal arts studies for two years. He did well at Harvard, but left to support his growing family. Grandfather Frost had, shortly before his death, purchased a farm for the young couple in Derry, New Hampshire. Robert worked the farm for nine years, while writing early in the mornings and producing many of the poems that would later become famous. Ultimately his farming proved unsuccessful and he returned to education as an English teacher, at Pinkerton Academy from 1906 to 1911, then at the New Hampshire Normal School (now Plymouth State University) in Plymouth, New Hampshire.

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Robert Frost".

Bill Anoatubby (born November 8, 1945) is the present Governor of the Chickasaw Nation, a position he has held since 1987. Anoatubby was raised in Tishomingo, Oklahoma, the tribe's first capital. In 1964, he graduated from Tishomingo High School, where he played football and was active in student government. Following graduation from high school, he attended Murray State College in Tishomingo, before transferring to East Central University in Ada, where he earned a bachelor's degree in business and accounting. Furthermore, he undertook additional studies in business and finance at ECU and Southeastern Oklahoma State University in Durant, Oklahoma. During his college years, he served in the Oklahoma Army National Guard, attaining the rank of staff sergeant and command of a light truck platoon, before his honorable discharge in 1971.

From 1972 to 1974, he was employed as an office manager for American Plating Company. From 1974 to 1975, he was employed by the Little Giant Corporation, working in the areas of accounting, budgeting, financial analysis, and electronic data processing. In 1987, Anoatubby was elected as the 30th Governor of the Chickasaw Nation, the thirteenth-largest tribe in the United States. He was reelected in 1991, 1995, 1999, 2003, and 2007. He is currently serving his sixth term which expires in 2011. As Governor, he is responsible for administration of more than 50 government programs, 13 tribal businesses and a $350 million annual budget. As Governor, he has devised a multi-pronged approach to improving conditions for the tribe in the areas of tribal finance, education, business and economic development, environmental protection, and healthcare.

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Bill Anoatubby".

James Claude Wright, Jr. (born December 22, 1922), usually known as Jim Wright, is a former Democratic U.S. Congressman from Texas who served 34 years in the U.S. House of Representatives and was the Speaker of the House from 1987 to 1989. Wright was born in Fort Worth, Texas. He attended Fort Worth and Dallas public schools, eventually graduating from Oak Cliff High School, then studied at Weatherford College and the University of Texas at Austin. In December 1941 he enlisted in the United States Army Air Forces, and after training was commissioned as a U.S. Army Air Forces 2nd Lt. as a bombardier in 1942. He earned a Distinguished Flying Cross flying combat with the 380th Bomb Group (Heavy) in the South Pacific during World War II. His retelling of his wartime exploits is contained in his 2005 book The Flying Circus: Pacific War — 1943 — As Seen through A Bombsight.

After the war, he made his home in Weatherford, Texas, where he joined partners in forming a Trade Show exhibition and marketing firm. He also joined the Democratic Party. In 1946 he won his first election, to the Texas State House of Representatives, where he served from 1947 to 1949. He was Mayor of Weatherford from 1950 to 1954, serving as President of the League of Texas Municipalities in 1953 In 1954, he was elected to Congress from Texas's 12th congressional district, which included Weatherford and was based in Fort Worth. He would be re-elected fourteen times, gradually rising in prominence in the party and in Congress. In 1956 he refused to sign the Southern Manifesto. He was elected House Majority Leader by one vote in December 1976, serving there until 1987, when he was elected the Speaker of the House. In 1988, he chaired the party's convention that nominated Michael Dukakis for president. During that convention, he introduced John F. Kennedy, Jr, for Kennedy's first televised speech.

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "James Claude Wright, Jr.".

George Miller III (born May 17, 1945) is an American politician who has been a Democratic member of the United States House of Representatives since 1975, representing California's 7th congressional district. The son of liberal State Senator and Democratic Party leader George Miller, Jr., he was born in Richmond, California. He attended and graduated from Diablo Valley College, Pleasant Hill, Calif., 1965 with an AA degree. Miller then when on to San Francisco State University and had graduated with an A.B degree in 1968. Right from college he ran unsuccessfully for his late father's State Senate seat in 1968. He then attended the University of California, Davis School of Law (King Hall), and after admission to the bar, served as legislative assistant to California Senate majority leader George Moscone before entering the House. Since 2007, Miller has served as chairman of the Education and Labor Committee, formerly known as the Education and the Workforce Committee.

Miller is on the Select Committee on Children, Youth, and Families (Ninety-eighth through One Hundred First Congresses); chair, Committee on Natural Resources (One Hundred Second and One Hundred Third Congresses); chair, Committee on Education and Labor (One Hundred Tenth and One Hundred Eleventh Congresses).

John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy (May 29, 1917 – November 22, 1963), often referred to by his initials JFK, was the 35th President of the United States, serving from 1961 until his assassination in 1963. Kennedy moved to a number of schools in his early education, but graduated from Choate in June 1935. The Brief, the school yearbook (of which he had been business manager), where he was selected the "Most likely to Succeed."

In September 1935, he sailed on the SS Normandie on his first trip abroad with his parents and his sister Kathleen to London with the intent of studying for a year with Professor Harold Laski at the London School of Economics (LSE) as his elder brother Joe had done. Mystery surrounds his time at LSE and there is uncertainty about how long he spent there before returning to America. In October 1935, Kennedy enrolled late and spent six weeks at Princeton University. He was then hospitalized for two months' observation for possible leukemia at Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in Boston in January and February 1936. He recuperated at the Kennedy winter home in Palm Beach in March and April, spent May and June working as a ranch hand on a 40,000-acre (160 km²) cattle ranch outside Benson, Arizona, and in July and August raced sailboats at the Kennedy summer home in Hyannisport.

In September 1936 he enrolled as a freshman at Harvard College starting over, where he produced that year's annual Freshman Smoker, called by a reviewer "an elaborate entertainment, which included in its cast outstanding personalities of the radio, screen and sports world." He tried out for the football, golf, and swimming teams. He earned a spot on the varsity swim team. In 1940, Kennedy completed his thesis, "Appeasement in Munich," about British participation in the Munich Agreement. He initially intended his thesis to be private, but his father encouraged him to publish it as a book. He graduated cum laude from Harvard with a degree in international affairs in June 1940, and his thesis was published in July 1940 as a book entitled Why England Slept, and became a bestseller. From September to December 1940, Kennedy was enrolled and audited classes at the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

After Kennedy's education and military service as commander of the Motor Torpedo Boat PT-109 during World War II in the South Pacific, his aspirations turned political. With the encouragement and grooming of his father, Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr., Kennedy represented Massachusetts's 11th congressional district in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1947 to 1953 as a Democrat, and served in the U.S. Senate from 1953 until 1960. Kennedy defeated then Vice President and Republican candidate Richard Nixon in the 1960 U.S. presidential election, one of the closest in American history. He was the second-youngest President (after Theodore Roosevelt), the first President born in the 20th century, and the youngest elected to the office, at the age of 43. Kennedy is the first and only Catholic and the first Irish American president, and is the only president to have won a Pulitzer Prize.

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "John Fitzgerald Kennedy".

Harry Mason Reid was born in Searchlight, Nevada on December 2, 1939, the son of Inez and Harry Reid, a miner in the camp 50 miles southeast of Las Vegas. He attended Basic High School in Henderson, Nevada, where he played football and was an amateur boxer. While at Basic he met future Nevada governor Mike O'Callaghan, who was a teacher there. Reid attended both Southern Utah University and transfered to Utah State University.

Reid graduated from George Washington University Law School with a J.D. while working for the United States Capitol Police. He returned to Nevada after law school and served as Henderson city attorney before being elected to the Nevada Assembly in 1966. In 1970, at age 30, Reid was chosen by O'Callaghan as his running mate for Lieutenant Governor of Nevada.

Reid is the senior United States Senator from Nevada, and has been the Senate's Majority Leader since January 2007. A member of the Democratic Party, he has been leader of the Senate Democrats since 2005, serving as Minority Leader from 2005 until the Democrats won control of the Senate in the 2006 congressional elections.

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Harry Reid ".

Martha Helen Stewart was born in Jersey City, New Jersey to middle-class Polish-American parents Edward Kostyra and Martha Ruszkowski Kostyra. Her family instilled in her a strong passion for activities in the home. Stewart's mother taught her how to cook and sew. Later, she learned the processes of canning and preserving when she visited her grandparents' home in Buffalo, New York. Her father had a passion for gardening, and passed on much of his knowledge and expertise to his daughter. Stewart was also active in many extracurricular activities, such as the school newspaper and the Art Club. Her family moved to Nutley, NJ and she graduated from Nutley High School. Finishing with straight As, she was awarded a partial scholarship to Barnard College in New York City.

At Barnard College she initially intended to major in chemistry, but switched to art and European history, and later architectural history. She left Barnard but continued her moderately successful modeling career. She returned to Barnard a year later, to graduate with a double major in History and Architectural History. Stewart began to hone and develop her business skills. In 1967, she became a stockbroker. She was very successful, but left the profession in 1973 to have more time with her daughter and restore her new home in Connecticut. Stewart and her husband decided to move to Westport, Connecticut. They purchased and undertook a massive restoration of the 1805 farmhouse on Turkey Hill Road that would later become the model for the set of the Martha Stewart Living television program.

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Martha Stewart"/a>.

George Walton Lucas, Jr. (born May 14, 1944) is an American film producer, screenwriter, director and founder/chairman of Lucasfilm Ltd.  He is best known for being the creator of the epic sci-fi franchise Star Wars and joint creator of the archaeologist-adventurer character Indiana Jones. Today, Lucas is one of the American film industry's most financially successful independent directors/producers.

Lucas was born in Modesto, California, the only son among George and Dorothy Lucas's four children. His father sold office supplies and equipment and owned a walnut farm.  Lucas was not a good student;. He attended Thomas Downey High School where his studies took a back seat to his passion for racecar driving. “My teenage years were completely devoted to cars,” said Lucas. “That was the most important thing in my life, from about the age of 14 to 20”. His dream of becoming a professional racecar driver came to an end just days before his high school graduation when Lucas was involved in a near-fatal car accident. Clipped from behind, Lucas’ harness snapped and he was thrown from the car.

While recovering, Lucas came to the realization that he wouldn’t be able to follow his racecar dream. He decided that he wanted to go to art school.  His parents refused to pay for it so, Lucas enrolled in Modesto Junior College, where he earned an Arts degree. “When I first got to college, I was very interested in the social sciences, anthropology, sociology, psychology, those kinds of things,” said Lucas. “And I was still interested in art and photography. I didn’t know that I could actually put them all together in one occupation and love it.”

Lucas then transferred to the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts. USC was one of the earliest universities to have a school devoted to motion picture film. During the years at USC, George Lucas shared a dorm room with Randal Kleiser. Along with classmates such as Walter Murch, Hal Barwood and John Milius, they became a clique of film students known as the The Dirty Dozen. He also became very good friends with fellow acclaimed student filmmaker Steven Spielberg. He graduated from USC in 1966.

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "George Walton Lucas, Jr.".

Daniel Eugene "Rudy" Ruettiger  (born August 23, 1948 in Joliet, Illinois, United States) is a motivational speaker and former collegiate football player best known as the inspiration for the motion picture Rudy. Daniel Ruettiger (nicknamed "Rudy") had a hard time in school because he was dyslexic (which was undiagnosed), and grew up in a lower-middle class household, the third of fourteen children. He attended Joliet Catholic Academy, where he played for locally famous coach Gordie Gillespie and led the team in tackles his junior and senior years.

After two years at Holy Cross College, and three rejections to transfer to the University of Notre Dame, Ruettiger was accepted as a student in the fall of 1974. It was during his time studying at Holy Cross that Ruettiger discovered he had dyslexia. Ruettiger harbored a dream to play for Notre Dame The Fighting Irish football team, despite being merely 5'6" and 165 pounds. Parseghian encouraged walk-on players from the student body. For example, Notre Dame's 1969 starting center, Mike Oriard, was a walk-on who eventually won a Rhodes Scholarship and an NFL contract with the Kansas City Chiefs.

Ruettiger earned a place on the Notre Dame Scout team, a practice-squad that helps the varsity team practice for games. Merv Johnson was the coach who was instrumental at keeping Rudy on as a scout team player.

After Parseghian stepped down after the 1974 season, Dan Devine was named head coach. In Ruettiger's last opportunity to play for Notre Dame at home, Devine put him into a game as defensive end against Georgia Tech on November 8, 1975. In the movie Rudy, Devine is given a somewhat antagonistic role, not wanting Rudy to dress for his last game. However, during the actual game, Devine reportedly came up with the idea to dress Rudy. In the final play of Ruettiger's senior season with the Fighting Irish, he recorded a sack, which is all his Notre Dame stat line has ever shown. Ruettiger was carried off the field by his teammates following the game. Ruettiger actually played for two plays. The first time he was unable to get to the quarterback, but on the second play he sacked the Georgia Tech quarterback, Rudy Allen. Ruettiger is one of two players in Notre Dame history ever to be carried off the field by his teammates.

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Daniel Eugene "Rudy" Ruettiger.

Willard Mitt Romney is an American businessman and the 70th Governor of Massachusetts.  Romney was CEO of Bain & Company, a management consulting firm, and co-founder of Bain Capital, a private equity investment firm. Romney successfully organized and steered the 2002 Winter Olympics as President and CEO of the Salt Lake Organizing Committee.  Romney served one term as Governor from 2003 to 2007, and was a candidate for the Republican nomination in the 2008 United States presidential election.  He is widely seen as a frontrunner for the Republican nomination for President in the 2012 Presidential Election.

Romney enrolled in Stanford University in 1965. He didn’t fit in so well with the countercultural movement already sweeping Stanford in 1965 and, according to the Boston Globe, was mocked as a square. After attending Stanford University for just two quarters in 1965, he left for France for 30 months as a missionary for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  In June 1968, Romney was involved in a serious car accident while driving fellow missionaries in southern France.  A Mercedes hit the Citroën DS Romney was driving; the fault for the accident, which left one person dead, was attributed to the driver of the other vehicle.

On his return to American, Romney attended Brigham Young University, where he graduated as valedictorian, earning his Bachelor of Arts degree summa cum laude in English in 1971. Romney received a ministerial deferment from the military draft while in France, and three years of deferments while a student. When he became eligible for military service in 1970, his high number in the annual draft lottery meant he would not be drafted.

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Willard Mitt Romney".

Richard Bruce "Dick" Cheney is the 46th and current Vice President of the United States, serving under President George W. Bush. Previously, he served as White House Chief of Staff, member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Wyoming, and Secretary of Defense. In the private sector, he was the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Halliburton Energy Services. Cheney attended Yale University, but, as he stated, "[he] flunked out." Among the influential teachers from his days in New Haven was Professor H. Bradford Westerfield, whom Cheney repeatedly credited with having helped to shape his approach to foreign policy. He later transferred to the University of Wyoming, where he earned both a Bachelor of Arts and a Master of Arts in political science. He subsequently started, but did not finish, doctoral studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Richard Bruce Cheney".

Jeane Jordan Kirkpatrick was an American ambassador and an ardent anticommunist. After serving as Ronald Reagan's foreign policy adviser in his 1980 campaign and later in his Cabinet, the longtime Democrat-turned-Republican was nominated as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and became the first woman to hold this position.

Henry Alfred Kissinger is a German-born American political scientist, diplomat, and recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize.  He served as National Security Advisor and later concurrently as Secretary of State in the Nixon Administration.  After his term, his opinion was still sought out by many following presidents.

A proponent of Realpolitik, Kissinger played a dominant role in United States foreign policy between 1969 and 1977. During this period, he pioneered the policy of détente with the Soviet Union, orchestrated the opening of relations with China, and negotiated the Paris Peace Accords, ending American involvement in the Vietnam War.

Kissinger attended George Washington High School at night while working in a shaving brush factory during the day time. After he graduated, he enrolled in the City College of New York, studying accounting.  He excelled academically as a part-time student, continuing to work while enrolled. His studies were interrupted in early 1943, when he was drafted into the U.S. Army. Kissinger underwent basic training at Camp Croft in Spartanburg, South Carolina, where he was naturalized upon arrival. The Army sent him to study engineering at Lafayette College, Pennsylvania, but the program was canceled, and Kissinger was reassigned to the 84th Infantry Division. In 1946, Kissinger was reassigned to teach at the European Command Intelligence School at Camp King, continuing to serve in this role as a civilian employee following his separation from the Army for several years.

Henry Kissinger received his A.B. degree summa cum laude at Harvard College in 1950, where he studied under William Yandell Elliott. He received his A.M. and Ph.D. degrees at Harvard University in 1952 and 1954, respectively. In 1952, while still at Harvard, he served as a consultant to the Director of the Psychological Strategy Board. His doctoral dissertation was titled "Peace, Legitimacy, and the Equilibrium (A Study of the Statesmanship of Castlereagh and Metternich). Kissinger remained at Harvard as a member of the faculty in the Department of Government and at the Center for International Affairs until 1971.

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Henry Alfred Kissinger".

Margaret Mead (December 16, 1901 – November 15, 1978) was an American cultural anthropologist, who was frequently a featured writer and speaker in the mass media throughout the 1960s and 1970s.

She was both a popularizer of the insights of anthropology into modern American and Western culture, and also a respected, if controversial, academic anthropologist. Her reports about the attitudes towards sex in South Pacific and Southeast Asian traditional cultures amply informed the 1960s sexual revolution. Mead was a champion of broadened sexual mores within a context of traditional western religious life.

Mead was the first of five children, born into a Quaker family, and raised in Doylestown, Pennsylvania. Her father, Edward Sherwood Mead, was a professor of finance at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, and her mother, Emily Fogg Mead, was a sociologist who studied Italian immigrants. Her sister Katharine (1906-1907) died at the age of nine months. This was a traumatic event for Mead, who had named this baby, and thoughts of her lost sister permeated her daydreams for many years. Her family moved frequently, so her early education alternated between home-schooling and traditional schools. Margaret studied one year, 1919, at DePauw University, then transferred to Barnard College where she earned her Bachelor's degree in 1923.

She studied with Professor Franz Boas and Dr. Ruth Benedict at Columbia University before earning her Master's in 1924. Mead set out in 1925 to do fieldwork in Polynesia. In 1926, she joined the American Museum of Natural History, New York City, as assistant curator. She received her Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1929.

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Margaret Mead".

Henry Ross Perot (born June 27, 1930) was born in Texarkana, Texas.  He is an American businessman from Texas best known for running for President of the United States in 1992 and 1996. Perot founded Electronic Data Systems (EDS) in 1962, sold the company to General Motors in 1984 and founded Perot Systems in 1988. Perot Systems was bought by Dell for $3.9 billion in 2009.

The son of a cotton broker, Perot attended Texarkana Junior College in 1948.  Perot then entered the United States Naval Academy in 1949 and helped establish its honor system.  By the time he graduated in 1953 he was president of his class and battalion commander. By late 1954, Perot was made a lieutenant, junior grade. However, in 1955, Perot expressed some discontent with his life in the United States Navy in a letter to his father. He quietly served the remainder of his four-year commitment and resigned his commission.

Electronic Data Systems (EDS), to design, install, and operate computer data-processing systems for clients.  EDS received lucrative contracts from the U.S. government in the 1960s, computerizing Medicare records. EDS went public in 1968 and the stock price shot up from $16 a share to $160 within days. Fortune called Perot the "fastest, richest Texan" in a 1968 cover story. In 1974 Perot gained some press attention for being "the biggest individual loser ever on the New York Stock Exchange" when his EDS shares dropped $450 million in value in a single day in April 1970. In 1984 General Motors bought controlling interest in EDS for $2.4 billion.

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Henry Ross Perot”.

Sarah Louise Palin is an American politician, author and political commentator who served as the 11th Governor of Alaska from 2006 until her resignation in 2009. She was the Republican nominee for Vice President of the United States in 2008.

Palin was born in Sandpoint, Idaho in February 11, 1964, the third of four children born to Charles R. Heath, a school secretary, and Sarah "Sally" Heath (née Sheeran), a science teacher and track coach. The family moved to Alaska when she was an infant.  She attended Wasilla High School, where she was the head of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, and a member of the girls' cross country team. As captain and point guard of the school's girls' basketball team that won the Alaska state championship in 1982, she gained the nickname "Barracuda" for her competitive streak.  She graduated in 1982.

She attended Hawaii Pacific University in the Fall of 1982 and North Idaho College (whose Alumni Association gave her the Distinguished Alumni Achievement Award in June 2008) in the Spring and Fall of 1983. In 1984, after winning the Miss Wasilla pageant, she finished third in the Miss Alaska pageant, receiving the "Miss Congeniality" award and a college scholarship.

She attended the University of Idaho in the Fall of 1984 and Spring of 1985, Matanuska-Susitna College in the Fall of 1985, and the University of Idaho again in the Spring and Fall of 1986 and the Fall of 1987, when she received her Bachelor's degree in communications with an emphasis in journalism.

Palin's early ambition was to be a sportscaster.  Accordingly, after graduating, she worked as a sportscaster  for KTUU-TV and KTVA-TV in Anchorage, and as a sports reporter for the Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman.  In 1988, she eloped with her childhood sweetheart Todd Palin, believing that her parents "couldn't afford a big white wedding." After the marriage, she helped in her husband’s commercial fishing business.

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Sarah Louise Palin".

James Charles Lehrer is an American journalist and the news anchor for PBS Newshour on PBS, known for his role as a frequent debate moderator during elections. Lehrer is an author of non-fiction and fiction, drawing from his experiences and interests in history and politics. Lehrer was born in Wichita, Kansas on May 19, 1934, the son of Lois Catherine (née Chapman), a bank clerk, and Harry Frederick Lehrer, a bus station manager.  He attended middle school in Beaumont, Texas and graduated from Thomas Jefferson High School in San Antonio, Texas, where he was one of the three sports editors at the Jefferson Declaration.  He attended and graduated from Victoria College in Texas and then transferred to Missouri School of Journalism at the University of Missouri.  Lehrer joined the United States Marine Corps and attributes his service and travels with helping him to look past himself and feel a connection to the world that he would not have otherwise experienced.

Lehrer began his career in journalism at The Dallas Morning News and the Dallas Times-Herald, where he covered the assassination of John F. Kennedy in 1963. From 1970 to 1973, Lehrer anchored the local single-story news show, Newsroom on KERA-TV, the local Public Broadcasting affiliate station in Dallas. Lehrer began working with PBS network in 1973, and in 1975 developed and co-anchored The MacNeil/Lehrer Report with Robert MacNeil. The news show was later renamed The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour, and after MacNeil's departure in 1995 was named The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer and finally The PBS Newshour in 2009.

Nicknamed the "Dean of Moderators" by CNN's Bernard Shaw, Lehrer has moderated eleven presidential candidate debates; with the most recent being the presidential debate between senators Barack Obama and John McCain on September 26 2008.

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "James Charles Lehrer”.

Barack Obama began to feel lonely and out of place after his freshman year at Occidental College in Los Angeles, he says in his autobiography, Dreams From My Father. So he decided to transfer to someplace more urban and, he hoped, diverse—Columbia University in New York. When he got there, Obama discovered that the life of a transfer student is not so easy, according to Phil Boerner, a friend from Occidental who transferred to Columbia the same year and shared an apartment with him their first semester in New York. "We didn't know people, and we were living off campus," which made it hard to connect with Columbia students, says Boerner, who now works as the spokesman for the California Veterinary Medical Association.

Warren Edward Buffett was born on August 30, 1930 in Omaha Nebraska. He is one of the most famous American investor, businessman, and philanthropist of our lifetime and the primary shareholder and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway.

Buffett is called the "Oracle of Omaha" or the "Sage of Omaha and is noted for his adherence to the value investing philosophy and for his personal frugality despite his immense wealth. Buffett is also a notable philanthropist, having pledged to give away 85 percent of his fortune to the Gates Foundation. He also serves as a member of the board of trustees at Grinnell College.

In 1947, a seventeen year old Warren Buffett graduated from High School. It was never his intention to go to college; he had already made $5,000 delivering newspapers (this is equal to $42,610.81 in 2000). His father had other plans, and urged his son to attend the Wharton Business School at the University of Pennsylvania. Buffett stayed two years, complaining that he knew more than his professors. When Howard was defeated in the 1948 Congressional race, Warren returned home to Omaha and transferred to the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Working full-time, he managed to graduate in three years. So, it took him five years to complete a four year degree.

Warren Buffett approached graduate studies with the same resistance he displayed a few years earlier. He was finally persuaded to apply to Harvard Business School, which, in the worst admission decision in history, rejected him as "too young". Slighted, Warren applied to Columbia where famed investors Ben Graham and David Dodd taught - an experience that would forever change his life.

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Warren Edward Buffett”.

Morgan Porterfield Freeman, Jr. is an American actor, film director, and narrator. He is noted for his reserved demeanor and authoritative speaking voice. Freeman received Academy Award nominations for his performances in Street Smart, Driving Miss Daisy, and The Shawshank Redemption before winning in 2005 for Million Dollar Baby.  He has also won a Golden Globe Award and a Screen Actors Guild Award.

Morgan Freeman with an authoritative voice and calm demeanor has grown into one of the most respected figures in modern US cinema.  Born in June 1937 in Memphis, Tennessee, the young Freeman’s family moved frequently during his childhood, living in Greenwood, Mississippi, Gary, Indiana, and finally Chicago, Illinois. He graduated from Broad Street High School in 1955 and then turned down a partial drama scholarship from Jackson State University, opting instead to work as a mechanic in the United States Air Force from 1955 to 1959. After his tour of duty, he moved to Los Angeles and attended Los Angeles Community College where he worked as a transcript clerk and attended classes. After school, he followed his acting and performing arts career. He moved to coast to coast and worked as a Dancer at the 1964 World’s Fair and was a member of the Opera Ring music group in San Francisco. Freeman acted in a touring company version of "The Royal Hunt of the Sun".

Freeman’s first dramatic arts exposure was on the stage and he appeared in an off Broadway production of "The Nigger Lovers" and also in an all-African American production of the exuberant musical Hello Dolly (1969). Morgan Freeman is best known for his compelling performances in such films as Driving Miss Daisy and The Shawshank Redemption.  But for kids who grew up in the 1970s, it is difficult not to first associate Freeman with the children's educational program, The Electric Company. The program, created by the Children's Television Workshop was aimed at seven to ten-year olds who were having difficulty learning to read.  Along with fellow cast members Rita Moreno, Bill Cosby and others, Freeman presented a successful mix of vaudeville, parody and satire in a rapidly paced, hip, yet educational program.

Later In 2006, Freeman was honored at the 1st Mississippi's Best Awards in Jackson, Mississippi with the Lifetime Achievement Award aw his works on and off the big screen. He also received an honorary degree of Doctor of Arts and Letters from Delta State University during the school's commencement exercises on May 13, 2006.