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For those who have browsed the nooks and crannies of the Fact Based Media website, you may have found a a page called Three Great Plays, where you can view some moments in sports that I always remember and always make me smile. I tell anyone who will listen to do the same. It’s thought provoking and fun.
Now I’m going to suggest to anyone reading this to think about five great people from your state. They don't have to be "The Greatest," just important. I once asked a Hoosier who was the greatest “Indianan” (she kindly ignored my error) and she answered, “Bobby Knight.” As a Gopher fan he didn’t exactly come to mind. But the late Senator Richard Lugar did. And I recently toured the Indiana statehouse, where I learned that Benjamin Harrison, a not inconsequential President, was also a Hoosier.
There are a few Iowans who read my posts. There you’d have to include John Wayne. But even though Iowa and Minnesota are neighbors, I can’t think of any others. Please enlighten me (God help us if someone mentions Charles Grassley). I lived in Missouri for three years, where Harry Truman gets first place. I now live in Kansas, and can’t imagine anyone not including Dwight Eisenhower or Bob Dole. In Michigan, where I spent thirteen years, you might include Senator Arthur Vandenberg and the actor Jeff Daniels. I have just one reader who grew up in Oklahoma, where I know of no one consequential. (Bob, give me some nominees.)
So here are five from my home state, in no particular order. Send me yours, and I’ll include them in a future post. You can comment here or feel free to send me an email at frank@factbasedmedia.com.
I recently heard journalist Farid Zacharia say he learned more about America reading the Great Gatsby than from any college course he had ever taken. Gatsby is now 100 years old, and it’s still assigned reading in most high schools. No one I ever read could pack more meaning into a single sentence.
An instant global celebrity as the first person to fly the Atlantic, Lindberg made a huge mistake expressing admiration for 1930's Germany, then followed up as a prominent leader in the America First movement that tied Roosevelt’s hands in assisting Britain. Once the war started, however, he recanted and became the more clear eyed patriot he had always been, and as an officer in the Army Air Corp, made contributions to fighter aircraft engineering.
Humphrey came within a breath of becoming President in 1968, but began his political journey as Mayor of Minneapolis, giving one of the greatest speeches in American history in support of a human rights plank at the 1948 Democratic convention. Later he will have his hands on every piece of social legislation since Social Security: Medicare, Medicaid, the Civil Rights Act, Voting Rights Act, and Humphrey-Hawkins (which adds full employment to the Federal Reserve’s mission). He was also a truly decent human being.
Winner of fifteen major golf titles, founding member and first president of the LPGA, and maybe Minnesota’s greatest athlete. I once had the privilege of chatting with professional golfer Kathy Whitworth, who won 88 LPGA titles and was the "female Tiger Woods of her day," why she she accepted an invitation to Minnesota for an event that I helped to plan, and Kathy said, expressing undying admiration, “Because of Patty.” Without Patty Berg, there may not be an LPGA, at least as we know it.
Bob Dylan. Is there much to say? In a recent poll (sorry, can’t find it again), musicians and music critics were asked who was the greatest songwriter in the last half of the twentieth century. It was a tie, Dylan and Carol King. Can’t argue with that.
Honorable Mention: Cass Gilbert, architect of the Woolworth Building, the U.S. Supreme Court building, and two state capitols, Minnesota's and West Virginia's.; Harry Blackmun, Supreme Court Justice and author of Roe v. Wade; Prince?
