(THEME)
VOICE ONE:
I’m Mary Tillotson.
VOICE TWO:
And I’m Steve Ember with the VOA Special English Program, Peoplein America. Today we tell about six important Americans who diedduring the past year.
VOICE ONE:
Remembering the many famous and important Americans who diedduring the year is difficult because there are so many worthdiscussing. There is not enough time to remember everyone. However,we will tell about several Americans whose involvement in societywas important and valuable.
We begin with the person likely to be missed most by youngAmericans. Millie Benson wrote books for young people. The maincharacter in each of her books is a sixteen-year-old girl namedNancy Drew who solved mysteries. These books were extremely popularfor many years. They gave teenage girls the idea that they could doanything that boys could do. This was especially important at a timewhen women were struggling for equality with men.
VOICE TWO:
Millie Benson began writing the “Nancy Drew” books innineteen-thirty. She wrote twenty-three of the first twenty-fivestories in the series under a false name, Carolyn Keene. This wasbecause Mizz Benson signed an agreement with her publisher promisingnever to make public her identity. For more than fifty years, shewas never officially recognized for writing the books.
This changed in nineteen-eighty during a court case against thepublisher. Mizz Benson was permitted to tell the world she was thetrue writer of the Nancy Drew series. The Nancy Drew mysteries havesold more than two-hundred-million books in seventeen languages.
Millie Benson was also one of the first female newspaperreporters. She wrote for newspapers for more than sixty years. Shewas also a pilot and an adventurer. She made many trips to thejungles of Mexico and Central America to study archeology. MillieBenson was ninety-six years old when she died.
VOICE ONE:
Stephen Jay Gould was an important American scientist. He workedas an evolutionary biologist at Harvard University in Cambridge,Massachusetts. Mister Gould studied fossils, the ancient remains ofanimals that lived during earlier periods in history. This permittedhim to better understand how different animal groups, or species,developed over time.
Mister Gould was a strongsupporter of the evolutionary theory developed by Charles Darwin inthe eighteen-hundreds. Mister Darwin argued that fossils could provethat plants and animals developed slowly over time from theirearlier ancestors. Mister Gould supported this theory. However, heand another scientist, Niles Eldredge, believed that evolution wasnot a slow, peaceful process. In nineteen-seventy-two, the two mendeveloped a new theory called “punctuated equilibrium.” They arguedthat evolution of species happened during short, fast bursts ofchange during longer periods of no change.
During his more than thirty years at Harvard University, MisterGould wrote more than twenty popular books. He also wrotethree-hundred monthly commentaries published in the magazine NaturalHistory. Many Americans will remember him because he tried to makescience popular and easy to understand. Stephen Jay Gould died atthe age of sixty.
VOICE TWO:
The next American we remember is Justin Dart, a longtime activistfor the rights of disabled people. Such people are unable to see,hear or walk because of accident or disease. Many use special chairswith wheels to move around. Diseases like multiple sclerosis,muscular dystrophy or polio can leave people disabled. In fact,Justin Dart lost the use of his legs when he became infected withpolio at age eighteen. He used a wheelchair for the rest of hislife.
Mister Dart worked for more thanfifty years to establish government policies to guarantee civilrights and health care for disabled people. He was considered one ofthe fathers of the Americans with Disabilities Act which became lawin nineteen-ninety. This historic civil rights law has improved thetreatment of disabled people across the country. It requires thatall public buildings, transportation and other services be built ormodernized so that disabled people can use them.
Justin Dart received a great honor when President Bill Clintonawarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom innineteen-ninety-eight. This is the highest honor given to civiliansin the United States. Justin Dart died at the age of seventy-one.
VOICE ONE:
The next American was perhaps the greatest hitter in the historyof professional baseball. From his early days in school, TedWilliams wanted to be a baseball player. He started playing in theAmerican minor leagues in nineteen-thirty-seven. Three years later,he began playing for the Boston Red Sox in the major leagues. Heplayed for nineteen years with the Red Sox.
During his time as a baseballplayer, Ted Williams had one of the highest batting averages inbaseball history. A batting average is based on the number of hits aplayer gets divided by the number of times he comes up to bat. TedWilliams is best remembered for his season batting average offour-hundred-six in nineteen-forty-one. No other professionalbaseball player has reached this goal.
Ted Williams had to interrupt his baseball playing two times whenhe was called to serve as a Marine fighter pilot during World WarTwo and the Korean War. Ted Williams retired from baseball innineteen-sixty. He then went on to supervise the Washington Senatorsbaseball team for three years.
He also managed the team the first year it moved to Texas andbecame the Texas Rangers. President Bush is a former part owner ofthe Texas Rangers. When Ted Williams died in July, Mister Bush said”America has lost a baseball star who will be greatly missed.” TedWilliams was eighty-three years old.
VOICE TWO:
Theresa Bernstein was an artist. When she died this year she wasbelieved to be about one-hundred-eleven years old. Mizz Bernsteingained recognition in the early nineteen-hundreds as one of thefirst women to paint in the Realist style. These artists paintedrealistic pictures of the lives of the common people. They weremembers of what was called the Ash Can School of realistic painting.
Theresa Bernstein painted peopleand places in New York City. She was both praised and criticized for”painting like a man.” Some experts said she saw the city from awoman’s point of view and painted activities in women’s lives. Forexample, her paintings showed women at the New York Public Library,traveling to work on public transportation and making clothing infactories. Other experts said she was just a great painter.
Theresa Bernstein continued to paint for more than eighty years.Her paintings are in the permanent collections of many majormuseums. In recent years, her paintings sold for as much asone-hundred-thousand dollars.
VOICE ONE:
The last American we remember this year is musician andsongwriter Ray Conniff. Mister Conniff got his start in music duringthe big band period of the nineteen-thirties and forties. He movedto New York City as a young man and worked with such famousmusicians as Artie Shaw and Harry James.
In nineteen-sixty-six, MisterConniff won a Grammy award for his recording of the song “SomewhereMy Love.” This was also known as “Lara’s Theme” in the popular film”Doctor Zhivago.”
Mister Conniff was one of the first songwriters to mix wordlesssinging with musical instruments. He often combined female voiceswith trumpets or clarinets and male voices with trombones orsaxophones.
Ray Conniff worked in the music business for more than sixtyyears. During that time, he recorded more than one-hundred albums.He produced more than twenty-five albums that were on the recordindustry’s “Top Forty” albums list. He sold more thanseventy-million records around the world. Ray Conniff waseighty-five years old when he died. We leave you now with his mostpopular song, “Somewhere My Love.”
(MUSIC)
VOICE TWO:
This Special English Program was written by Jill Moss. It wasproduced by Paul Thompson. I’m Steve Ember.
VOICE ONE:
And I’m Mary Tillotson. Join us again next week for anotherPeople in America Program on the VOICE OF AMERICA.