WHoyt Wayne Axton was an American folk music singer-songwriter, guitarist, and a film and television actor. He became prominent in the early 1960s, establishing himself on the West Coast as a folk singer with an earthy style and powerful voice. As he matured, some of his songwriting became well known throughout the world. Among them were "Joy to the World", "The Pusher", "No No Song", "Greenback Dollar", "Della and the Dealer", and "Never Been to Spain".
WMae Boren Axton was known in the music industry as the "Queen Mother of Nashville." She co-wrote the Elvis Presley hit single "Heartbreak Hotel" with Tommy Durden. She worked with Mel Tillis, Reba McEntire, Willie Nelson, Eddy Arnold, Tanya Tucker, Johnny Tillotson, and Blake Shelton.
WBob Booker is an American writer and producer of television shows and record albums. He is best known for producing the 1962 album The First Family with Earle Doud. The album is a parody of President John F. Kennedy and his family, and it both remained at #1 on the Billboard 200 for 12 weeks and won a Grammy for Best Album of the Year in 1963.
WAlan Stephenson Boyd was an American attorney and transportation executive who led several large corporations and also served the U.S. Government in various transportation-related positions. He was the first United States Secretary of Transportation, appointed by Lyndon Johnson. Additionally, he served in executive positions with the Civil Aeronautics Board, the U.S. Department of Commerce, and was a president of Amtrak.
WCora Crane, born Cora Ethel Eaton Howarth was an American businesswoman, nightclub and bordello owner, writer and journalist. She is best known as the common-law wife of writer Stephen Crane from 1896 to his death in 1900, and took his name although they never married. She was still legally married to her second husband, Captain Donald William Stewart, a British military officer who had served in India and then as British Resident of the Gold Coast, where he was a key figure in the War of the Golden Stool (1900) between the British and the Ashanti Empire in present-day Ghana.
WDonna Deegan is a congressional candidate, an American author, breast cancer awareness advocate, and former weekday television anchor on First Coast News at WTLV/WJXX in Jacksonville, Florida, United States. Deegan previously co-anchored the weeknight 5:30 and 11 p.m. newscasts of First Coast News.
WMary Elizabeth Anania Edwards was an American attorney, a best-selling author and a health care activist. She was married to John Edwards, the former U.S. Senator from North Carolina who was the 2004 United States Democratic vice-presidential nominee.
WThomas Courtney Fleming, was one of the most influential African American journalists on the West Coast in the 20th century. Starting in 1944, he spent 61 years as an editor, reporter and columnist for the black press in San Francisco. He began his career that year as founding editor of the Reporter – then the city's only black newspaper. In 1948 it merged with the rival Sun to become the Sun-Reporter. Published by Fleming's best friend, civil rights activist and physician Dr. Carlton Goodlett, it remained San Francisco's leading black newspaper throughout Fleming's working life, and is still published weekly.
WCharles Latham Gaines, Jr. is an American writer and outdoorsman, notable for numerous works in both the fiction and non-fiction genres. His writing most typically concerns the outdoors sports of fishing in general and fly fishing in particular, as well as upland bird hunting and mountaineering, often with an intellectual and philosophical bent, and an eye towards the various cultures and traditions surrounding different forms of fishing around the world.
WJames Weldon Johnson was an American writer and civil rights activist. He was married to civil rights activist Grace Nail Johnson. Johnson was a leader of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), where he started working in 1917. In 1920, he was the first African American to be chosen as executive secretary of the organization, effectively the operating officer. He served in that position from 1920 to 1930. Johnson established his reputation as a writer, and was known during the Harlem Renaissance for his poems, novels, and anthologies collecting both poems and spirituals of black culture. He wrote the lyrics for "Lift Every Voice and Sing", which later became known as the Negro National Anthem.
WWilliam Stetson Kennedy was an American author, folklorist and human rights activist. One of the pioneer folklore collectors during the first half of the 20th century, he is remembered for having infiltrated the Ku Klux Klan in the 1940s, exposing its secrets to authorities and the outside world. His actions led to the 1947 revocation by the state of Georgia of the Klan's national corporate charter. Kennedy wrote or co-wrote ten books.
WMadeleine L'Engle Camp was an American writer of fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and young adult fiction, including A Wrinkle in Time and its sequels: A Wind in the Door, A Swiftly Tilting Planet, Many Waters, and An Acceptable Time. Her works reflect both her Christian faith and her strong interest in modern science.
WAl Letson is an American poet, playwright, performer, journalist, and radio and podcast host. Since 2013, he's been the host of Reveal from the Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX. Before that, he created and hosted the show State of the Re:Union, distributed by National Public Radio and PRX.
WWilliam Newton Morgan, Sr. was an American architect and author, based in Jacksonville, Florida. Three of his designs are included on the Florida Association of the American Institute of Architects list of Florida's top 100 buildings. He has written five books including his most recent, Earth Architecture (2008). In 2012 the University of Florida awarded Morgan an honorary doctor of arts degree as well as the first recipient of its School of Architecture's Lifetime Achievement Award. Morgan has been described as a pioneer of sustainable design.
WMichael A. Persinger was an American-Canadian professor of psychology at Laurentian University, a position he had held from 1971 until his death in 2018. His most well-known hypotheses include the temporal lobes of the human brain as the central correlate for mystical experiences, subtle changes in geomagnetic activity as mediators of parapsychological phenomena, the tectonic strain within the Earth's crust as the source of luminous phenomena attributed to unidentified aerial objects, and the importance of specific quantifications for energy, photon flux density, and small shifts in magnetic field intensities for integrating cellular activity as well as human thought with universal phenomena.
WMichael David Reynolds was an American educator who served as professor of astronomy at Florida State College at Jacksonville in Jacksonville, Florida. He served as the director of Chabot Space and Science Center in Alameda County, California. Reynolds was best known for his work in science education, both in lecture halls and less formal settings. He also participated in astronomy and space exploration outreach.
WWilliam Graham Tullian Tchividjian, a grandson of Christian evangelist Billy Graham, is a pastor who was removed from ministry of the Presbyterian Church in America denomination, and author of more than a half dozen books about Christianity and current issues, including One Way Love and It is Finished.