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Selected Biography
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Frank Carlson (January 23, 1893 – May 30, 1987) was an American politician who served as thirtieth Governor of Kansas and United States Representative and United States Senator from Kansas.
In 1946 Carlson was elected governor of Kansas. As governor, he pushed mental health programs as well as a long-term highway project. In 1949, Kansas senator Clyde M. Reed died, and Carlson appointed Harry Darby to fill the seat. Darby continued his service in the Senate until Carlson himself was elected to fill the seat in 1950. Instead of waiting until January to be sworn in, he took his seat on November 28, 1950, leaving the office of governor to Frank L. Hagaman who served less than two months.
In 1952, he campaigned to get fellow Kansan Dwight D. Eisenhower into the White House, and then brokered a deal through Senator Robert A. Taft of Ohio, known as "Mr. Republican" for his leadership of the party's right-wing, became majority leader. According to Billy Graham's biography Just As I Am, Carlson organized the first Presidential Prayer Breakfast, later known as the National Prayer Breakfast and sponsored behind-the-scenes by The Family, a Christian political organization. In 1950, Carlson traveled to Haiti on behalf of The Family and returned to urge Congress to support the regime of the dictator Papa Doc Duvalier. Carlson was re-elected twice, in 1956 and 1962, before returning to Concordia for retirement. (Read more...)Portal:Kansas/Selected Biography/2
Laura Mae Cobb (May 11, 1892–September 27, 1981) was a member of the United States Navy Nurse Corps who served during World War II. She received numerous decorations for her actions during the defense of Manila and her 37 months as a POW of the Japanese, during which she continued to serve as Chief Nurse for ten other imprisoned Navy nurses—some of the "Angels of Bataan." She retired from the Nurse Corps as a Lieutenant Commander in 1947.
Laura Cobb was born in Atchison, Kansas on May 11, 1892, and moved with her family to Mulvane, Kansas (near Wichita) the following year. She graduated from Mulvane High School in 1910, taught school for a time, entered the nursing training program at Wesley Hospital in Wichita in 1915, and graduated from that program in 1918.
Cobb served as a nurse in the United States Navy from July 5, 1918, to July 21, 1921 (including brief service at the Canacao Naval Hospital in Manila at the end of World War I), and then worked in civilian hospitals in Iowa and Michigan for three years. She rejoined the Navy in April 1924 and served in naval hospitals throughout the US in the 1920s and 1930s. After serving for more than a decade in a naval hospital in Washington DC, rumors of war prompted her to request "to go overseas because someone had to go." She was subsequently transferred to the naval hospital on Guam in April 1940, where she received a commendation for "continuous duty for forty-eight hours, during which she repeatedly risked life and limb in her efforts to insure the safety and comfort of the patients..." during the typhoon of November 3, 1940. (Read more...)Portal:Kansas/Selected Biography/3
Orval Leroy Grove (August 29, 1919 – April 20, 1992) was an American right-handed pitcher in Major League Baseball who played for ten seasons in the American League with the Chicago White Sox. In 207 career games, Grove pitched 1,176 innings and posted a win–loss record of 63–73, with 66 complete games, 11 shutouts, and a 3.78 earned run average (ERA).
Grove was born in West Mineral, Kansas, on August 29, 1919, and was raised in Maywood, Illinois. By eighth grade, Grove developed a fondness for baseball and began pitching for the Proviso East High School baseball team. The only freshman on the Proviso East High School varsity baseball team, Grove's pitching ability attracted the attention of the White Sox. After signing with the team in 1937, Grove moved between the major leagues and minor leagues for a few seasons until 1943, when he found a solid place in the White Sox's pitching rotation. Grove had a career-year in 1943, finishing the season with career-bests in ERA, wins, and complete games; in 1944, he made his only All-Star appearance.
Grove spent four more full seasons with the White Sox, and after pitching one game in 1949, was sent to the Sacramento Solons of the Pacific Coast League. After playing four seasons with them, he formally retired from professional baseball. After retirement, he worked with his uncle in a trucking business in Chicago while continuing to pitch at the semi-pro level. In 1992, Grove died at the age of 72.Portal:Kansas/Selected Biography/4
Dr. Ted Kessinger (born January 15, 1941 in Sioux Falls, South Dakota) is the former head football coach at Bethany College in Lindsborg, Kansas. He led the Terrible Swedes from 1976 to 2003 and built a record of 219 wins, 57 losses, and 1 tie. While at Bethany, he took his team to the NAIA playoffs ten times and achieved a top 25 ranking 20 times. His teams never posted a losing season during his entire coaching tenure.[1]
Kessinger was inducted into the NAIA Hall of Fame in 2003 as well as the Kansas Sports Hall of Fame in 2005.[2] He was elected to the College Football Hall of Fame in 2010.[3] His son is Kent Kessinger, the head coach at Ottawa University.
Kessenger was the head coach of the first American football team to play in Sweden.[4] (Read more...)Portal:Kansas/Selected Biography/5
James Manney Hagaman 1830 - January 18, 1904 was a lawyer, land agent, newspaper editor, and the founder of Concordia, Kansas. He and his wife settled in what is now Cloud County in 1860. In addition to founding the town of Concordia, he is credited with leading the movement to separate what was then Shirley Township from Washington County in 1866.
In 1866, the people of Shirley Township sent Hagaman to Kansas Governor Samuel J. Crawford with the petition requesting the right to organize as a county. The governor granted permission and Shirley Township became Shirley County (later "Cloud" County).
Hagaman was elected county clerk and promptly became a candidate to be the first to represent Shirley County in the Kansas House of Representatives, losing to John B. Rupe. In 1868, he ran again for the Kansas House and this time won, barely defeating a man named Donoho. He later served two terms as Mayor of Concordia from 1878-1880 and also served five terms on the city council.
As Hagaman rose to political power in the state of Kansas, he faced political opposition in the town of Clyde, Kansas from several sources. In her book on the history of Concordia, Janet Pease Emery wrote:
- "Jim Hagaman was done with Clyde. He swore it would never be the county seat. If it took every ox, cow, and horse he owned, he'd see that the courthouse went elsewhere -- even if he had to build a town himself.
- Madder than hops, Hagaman took out a claim in Lincoln Township and founded Concordia."
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Andrew Frank Schoeppel (November 23, 1894 – January 21, 1962) was an American politician and a member of the Republican Party. He was the 29th Governor of Kansas from 1943 to 1947 and a U.S. Senator from 1949 until his death. He was born in 1894 in Claflin, Kansas and died in 1962 of abdominal cancer at the National Naval Medical Center at Bethesda, Maryland.
Before serving as governor, Schoeppel was the seventh head college football coach for the Fort Hays State University Tigers located in Hays, Kansas and he held that position for the 1929 season. His career coaching record at Fort Hays was 2 wins, 5 losses, and 0 ties. As of completion of the 2007 season, this ranks him 20th at Fort Hays in total wins and 19th at Fort Hays in winning percentage.
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Bill Snyder (born October 7, 1939, in Saint Joseph, Missouri) is the head football coach at Kansas State University. He was rehired to the position on November 24, 2008, making Snyder one of the few college football head coaches to have non-consecutive tenure at the same school.[5] Snyder previously served as head coach at the school from 1989 to 2005. The football stadium at Kansas State University is named in honor of him and his family (Bill Snyder Family Football Stadium).
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Joe Henry Engle (born August 26, 1932) is an American pilot, aeronautical engineer and former NASA astronaut. He was the commander of two Space Shuttle missions including STS-2 in 1981, the program's second orbital flight. He also flew two flights in the Shuttle program's 1977 Approach and Landing Tests. Engle is one of twelve pilots who flew the North American X-15, an experimental spaceplane jointly operated by the Air Force and NASA, and the last surviving test pilot of the aircraft. After Richard H. Truly died in 2024, Engle is now the last surviving crew member of STS-2.
As an X-15 pilot, Engle made three flights above 50 miles, thus qualifying for astronaut wings under the American convention for the boundary of space. In 1966 he was selected for NASA's 5th Astronaut Group, joining the Apollo program. He was backup Lunar Module Pilot (LMP) for Apollo 14 and originally scheduled as LMP for Apollo 17. However, cancellation of later flights prompted NASA to select geologist-astronaut Harrison Schmitt as LMP, displacing Engle. (Full article...)Portal:Kansas/Selected Biography/9
Dwight David Eisenhower (/ˈaɪzənhaʊ.ər/ EYE-zən-how-ər; born David Dwight Eisenhower; October 14, 1890 – March 28, 1969), nicknamed Ike, was an American military officer and statesman who served as the 34th president of the United States from 1953 to 1961. During World War II, he was Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force in Europe and achieved the five-star rank as General of the Army. Eisenhower planned and supervised two of the most consequential military campaigns of World War II: Operation Torch in the North Africa campaign in 1942–1943 and the invasion of Normandy in 1944.
Eisenhower was born in Denison, Texas, and raised in Abilene, Kansas. His family had a strong religious background, and his mother became a Jehovah's Witness. Eisenhower, however, belonged to no organized church until 1952. He graduated from West Point in 1915 and later married Mamie Doud, with whom he had two sons. During World War I, he was denied a request to serve in Europe and instead commanded a unit that trained tank crews. Following the war, he was promoted to the rank of brigadier general. In 1941, after the United States entered World War II, Eisenhower oversaw the invasions of North Africa and Sicily before supervising the invasions of France and Germany. After the war ended in Europe, he served as military governor of the American-occupied zone of Germany (1945), Army Chief of Staff (1945–1948), president of Columbia University (1948–1953), and as the first supreme commander of NATO (1951–1952).
In 1952, Eisenhower entered the presidential race as a Republican to block the isolationist foreign policies of Senator Robert A. Taft, who opposed NATO. Eisenhower won that year's election and the 1956 election in landslides, both times defeating Adlai Stevenson II. Eisenhower's main goals in office were to contain the spread of communism and reduce federal deficits. In 1953, he considered using nuclear weapons to end the Korean War and may have threatened China with nuclear attack if an armistice was not reached quickly. China did agree and an armistice resulted, which remains in effect. His New Look policy of nuclear deterrence prioritized "inexpensive" nuclear weapons while reducing funding for expensive Army divisions. He continued Harry S. Truman's policy of recognizing Taiwan as the legitimate government of China, and he won congressional approval of the Formosa Resolution. His administration provided major aid to help the French fight off Vietnamese Communists in the First Indochina War. After the French left, he gave strong financial support to the new state of South Vietnam. He supported regime-changing military coups in Iran and Guatemala orchestrated by his own administration. During the Suez Crisis of 1956, he condemned the Israeli, British, and French invasion of Egypt, and he forced them to withdraw. He also condemned the Soviet invasion during the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 but took no action. He deployed 15,000 soldiers during the 1958 Lebanon crisis. Near the end of his term, a summit meeting with the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev was cancelled when a US spy plane was shot down over the Soviet Union. Eisenhower approved the Bay of Pigs Invasion, which was left to John F. Kennedy to carry out.
On the domestic front, Eisenhower governed as a moderate conservative who continued New Deal agencies and expanded Social Security. He covertly opposed Joseph McCarthy and contributed to the end of McCarthyism by openly invoking executive privilege. He signed the Civil Rights Act of 1957 and sent Army troops to enforce federal court orders which integrated schools in Little Rock, Arkansas. His administration undertook the development and construction of the Interstate Highway System, which remains the largest construction of roadways in American history. In 1957, following the Soviet launch of Sputnik, Eisenhower led the American response which included the creation of NASA and the establishment of a stronger, science-based education via the National Defense Education Act. The Soviet Union began to reinforce their own space program, escalating the Space Race. His two terms saw unprecedented economic prosperity except for a minor recession in 1958. In his farewell address, he expressed his concerns about the dangers of massive military spending, particularly deficit spending and government contracts to private military manufacturers, which he dubbed "the military–industrial complex". Historical evaluations of his presidency place him among the upper tier of American presidents. (Full article...)Portal:Kansas/Selected Biography/10
- ^ Topeka Capital-Journal "Ted Kessinger retires with 219-57-1 record" February 12, 2004
- ^ Football Foundation "2010 Divisional College Football Hall of Fame Class Announced"
- ^ ESPN.com "College Football" May 11, 2010
- ^ The Victoria Advocate "Sweden's First Shot at Football a Success Despite 72-7 Defeat" by Stephaan Nastrom, Jun 20, 1985
- ^ Snyder hiring