Eight Famous Figures (Plus One) Born On The Fourth Of July

By Anne W. Semmes

Calvin Coolidge: Our 30th President reigns supreme to this date of being the only U.S. President to have Independence Day as his birthday, born on July 4, 1872. On August 3, 1923, serving as Vice-President, he received news at his family homestead in Vermont of the sudden death of President Warren G. Harding and was sworn in that day by his father.

Nathaniel Hawthorne, the novelist who gave us “The Scarlet Letter,” was born on July 4, 1804 in a haunted town called, Salem in Massachusetts. He rued having a great, great grandfather called John Hathorne for having been involved in those Salem witch trials, so added a w in his last name to distance himself.

Stephen Foster, the renown song writer, was born in Pennsylvania on July 4, 1826 to become known as the “father of American music” for his 200 songs, many of them associated with the South, including “Oh! Susanna,” “Camptown Races,” “Old Folks at Home” (aka “Swanee River”) and “My Old Kentucky Home,” after only visiting the South once. He lost his winnings to his sheet music publishers and died age 37 in the charity ward of New York’s Bellevue Hospital.

Rube Goldberg, the Pulitzer prize-winning editorial cartoonist, was born in San Francisco on July 4, 1883. His cartoons of overdesigned machines led to his name becoming an adjective as well as a noun. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines “Rube Goldberg” as “doing something simple in a very complicated way that is not necessary.”

George Steinbrenner – New York Yankees owner – was born wealthy on July 4, 1930, near Cleveland, Ohio. He joined the family shipping business and did so well he managed to buy baseball’s most famous franchise in 1973. Under his watch the Yankees won seven World Series championships and 11 American League pennants.

Ann Landers was born Esther “Eppie” Lederer on July 4, 1918 in Sioux City, Iowa. Her advice column was syndicated in more than 1,000 newspapers over the course of nearly 50 years. Her twin sister also born on the Fourth of July, Pauline Phillips, wrote the Dear Abby advice column. The two sisters attended the same college, held a joint marriage ceremony then became estranged over their newspaper rivalry.

Ron Kovic was well portrayed by Tom Cruise in the 1989 Academy Award winning movie “Born on the Fourth of July,” that was based on Kovic’s best-selling autobiography. Kovic was born in Wisconsin on July 4, 1946. The Vietnam veteran on his second tour of duty was struck by enemy fire and left paralyzed from the chest down. He became a peace activist and an outspoken critic of the Vietnam War and the poor conditions inside America’s veterans’ hospitals.

Geraldo Rivera, the television personality, was born on July 4, 1943, in New York City. While practicing law in New York, Rivera was offered a job as a television reporter by the local ABC affiliate. As host of “Good Night America” in 1975, Rivera broadcast the Zapruder Film, which captured the assassination of John F. Kennedy for the first time on national television.

Thomas Jenkins Semmes (famous to this reporter as her father) was born on July 4, 1900 in Memphis, Tennessee. While serving in Intelligence with the Army Air Corps in World War II, he took great (and mischievous) delight in introducing himself as Thomas Jefferson Semmes on his birthday.