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1-8 of 8
- People's recollections of Carrie Nation range from a female evangelical prophetess, to raving lunatic. Carry Amelia Moore was born into a family that operated a sharecropping plantation, that was in central Kentucky, on November 25, 1846. As a young woman she was unusually tall and not very pretty. She married a young man who, she discovered, was a free mason, a smoker, and an alcoholic. He left her at the age of twenty-one, and from then on she vowed to fight the demon liquor that had taken her man from her. She re-married, with several other women in her community, helped to form the Wormen's Christian Temperance Union, which is still in existence today. Yet Nation now took her crusade a step further, beginning a campaign of "hatchetation". Over the course of ten years, she led groups of women into saloons, wielding an ax, and smashed each place to bits. She made headlines all over the country, and was even the subject of at least four short films, where she was often portrayed in a comic light, by a male actor in women's clothes. Her fame soon got the better of her and she soon drifted into obscurity. She died in a mental health facility on Friday, June 9th, 1911, never living to see the result of her cause: the 18th Ammendment. Several years after the enactment of Prohibition, it was reported that an illegal liquor still has been discovered, on the grounds of Carry Nation's birthplace.
- Chicago gangster George "Bugs" Moran was born to French immigrants on August 21, 1893 as Adelard Cunin in St. Paul, MN. He left St. Paul at age 19 and moved to Chicago, where he soon hooked up with several of the city's street gangs and got a taste of the criminal underworld. He took to it readily, and before he was 21 he had been jailed three times.
Moran, like most gang bosses of the 1920s, came into his own with the advent of Prohibition in 1920. He became the head of a very successful bootlegging outfit known as the North Side Gang. In that capacity he came into conflict with Chicago mobsters Johnny Torrio and Al Capone. Torrio, who only used violence when absolutely necessary, worked out an agreement with Moran and another gangster, Charles Dion O'Bannion, but that didn't last too long. Moran and O'Bannion detested Capone, often calling him by his nickname "Scarface"--Capone was extremely sensitive about the big knife scar on his face and was known to have killed men who used that nickname in his presence--and O'Bannion eventually paid the price for his defiance of Torrio and Capone: he was assassinated by Capone/Torrio gunmen. Moran attended O'Bannion's funeral--as did Capone and Torrio--and vowed to avenge his friend's murder.
Moran's mob, and the remnants of O'Bannion's gang, engaged in a bloody war with the Torrio/Capone outfit. They tried to kill both Torrio and Capone, once when Capone was spotted getting out of his car on the street and another time when he and his associates were dining in a restaurant. Capone escaped both attempts uninjured, but Torrio was not so luckily. A carload of Moran's gunmen spotted Torrio's car on the street and opened fire, hitting Torrio at least five times. He survived, but shortly afterward decided to retire and turned over the reins to Capone.
Capone and Moran eventually reached a truce, of sorts. While there were no bloody gun battles as there had been in the past, the two continued to take potshots at each other--Moran would hijack some of Capone's bootlegging trucks, Capone would burn down one of Moran's legitimate businesses, etc. However, it wasn't long before this escalated into full-scale violence, and Moran had several of Capone's friends and associates killed. Two of them were Antonio Lombardo and "Patsy" Lolordo, who had been longtime friends of Capone. He vowed to wipe out Moran once and for all. To that end, he engineered an elaborate assassination plot against Moran and his mob at their headquarters on Clark Street in Chicago. On Feb. 14, 1929, Capone sent a squad of killers dressed as police, complete with police car, to the building, expecting to find Moran and his gang there. Unfortunately, they mistook one of Moran's gangsters for him, not realizing that Moran was in fact walking toward the building when he saw the "police car" outside of it, and he turned around and walked away. Capone's killers lined up the seven men they found in the building and machine-gunned them to death, an incident that became known as The St. Valentine's Day Massacre.
Moran, when asked by reporters who he thought was behind it, replied, "Nobody but Capone kills like that". His organization remained intact, but when Prohibition was repealed, his gang's fortunes declined, and a few years later Moran decided to leave Chicago. He didn't completely forgo the gangster life, however. In 1936, seven years after the St. Valentine's massacre, a hitman named Jack McGurn--aka "Machine Gun" McGurn--who was widely suspected of being the main triggerman in the massacre was murdered in a bowling alley by a squad of gunmen, and a valentine's card was left near his body. A rhort rhyming limerick about McGurn was also left with the body, and since both Moran and his mentor O'Bannion were known to favor pranks and limericks, it was widely assumed that it was Moran who had McGurn killed as payback for the 1929 killings.
Moran's fortunes declined in the 1930s. He spent several stretches in prison, for relatively penny-ante crimes like mail fraud and robbery. He was eventually sentenced to ten years in Leavenworth Federal Prison on a bank-fraud charge, and it was in Leaenworth that he died of lung cancer on Feb. 25, 1957. He was buried in the pauper's section of the prison cemetery. - Memphis-born George "Machine Gun" Kelly (born George Kelly Barnes) was unlike most of his contemporary "celebrity" gangsters in that he didn't come from a poverty-stricken background--his father was a well-to-do insurance company executive and George was raised in very comfortable circumstances. Kelly graduated high school and actually attended college (Mississippi A&M, studying agriculture). His academic career was a bust, however, as his grades were poor and he was constantly receiving demerits for getting into trouble, so he left after four months. He married and fathered two children, but his inability to keep a job doomed the marriage and his wife eventually left him and took the kids with her.
Kelly then hooked up with a small-time bootlegger in Memphis, and for the first time in his life, he began to make some real money. However, after several arrests, he left Memphis with a new girlfriend and a new name, George Kelly (he dropped the name "Barnes" because he despised his father), and headed west. He continued his bootlegging career, but in 1928 got caught smuggling liquor onto an Indian reservation--a federal crime, although the hapless Kelly apparently didn't know it--and was sentenced to three years in Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary. He got out after a year, but his luck didn't hold out. He was arrested in New Mexico on bootlegging charges and sent to state prison there. Upon his release, he went to Oklahoma City and hooked up with a small-time gangster and bootlegger named Steve Anderson. He fell for Anderson's girlfriend, a convicted robber and ex-prostitute named Kathryn Thorne who was suspected by local police of murdering her last husband. She left Anderson for Kelly and they married in 1930.
It was Kathryn who brought out Kelly's "talents" as a big-time criminal; up to that time he had been a pretty small-time bootlegger. She was determined to make her husband "Public Enemy #1", more famous than John Dillinger, Pretty Boy Floyd or any of the other notorious gangsters of the era. She bought him a Thompson submachine gun and had him constantly practice with it (which didn't do much good, as he didn't like the loud noise it made when fired and he was never much of a marksman). However, Kathryn would take his spent shells from target practice and pass them around to her underworld friends as "souvenirs" from the many robberies she claimed her husband had committed. Her marketing campaign began to pay off, and soon "Machine Gun Kelly" gained a reputation (completely unjustified) as a tough, cold and hardened bank robber. In order to please his domineering wife, the intimidated Kelly participated in the robberies of several small-town banks across Texas and Mississippi. His gang would burst in waving their machine guns, while Kelly (whom many witnesses described as "looking terrified") cleaned out the registers. Even the FBI fell for Kathryn's publicity campaign, putting out flyers describing Kelly as an "expert machine gunner". Not satisfied with robbing small-town banks, Kathryn came up with a scheme to get them some "real" money--they would kidnap wealthy Oklahoma businessman Charles Urschel. Kelly and two accomplices broke into the Urschel mansion where the millionaire was playing cards with friends. True to form, Kelly's planning for the operation left much to be desired--he didn't know what Urschel looked like and had no idea which, if any, of the card players was him, so he and his gang wound up taking all of the men. When they later positively identified Urschel they let the other men go, sending along with them a demand for a $200,000 ransom. The ransom was eventually paid and Urschel was released unharmed. However, he had deliberately left his fingerprints all over the house where he was being kept, and even though he had been blindfolded he was able to pay enough attention to his surroundings (noises, smells, etc.) so that the FBI eventually determined where he had been held. They raided the house and arrested one of the kidnappers, who identified Kelly and the rest of the gang. Kelly and his wife were on the run, traveling around the Midwest and spending their share of the ransom money (not knowing that the serial numbers of the bills had been recorded and were being traced whenever they turned up). They eventually went back to Memphis, where they holed up in a rooming house. It didn't take the feds long to find out where they were, and on the night of 9/26/33, FBI agents and Memphis police raided the building. Kelly was trapped in a stairwell by cops and FBI agents aiming machine guns at him, and shouted the famous words, "Don't shoot, G-men! Don't shoot!" He and Kathryn were quickly arrested and flown back to Oklahoma to stand trial for the Urschel kidnapping. They were found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment. Kelly was sent to Leavenworth, where he bragged to reporters that he would soon break out. That got him transferred to the infamous--and much harder to break out of--Alcatraz Prison in San Francisco Bay, being one of the first prisoners to be housed there. Away from his wife's influence, Kelly became a model prisoner, popular with guards and inmates alike. He was transferred back to Leavenworth in 1951, and on 7/18/54, died there of a heart attack. - David Cochran Heath was born on 18 November 1952 in the USA. He was an actor, known for Flint's Lipstick Red (2015). He died on 14 August 2022 in Leavenworth, Washington, USA.
- TheyKnowDame was born on 10 December 1999 in Hackensack, New Jersey, USA. He was an actor, known for TheyKnowDame: Remember (2023). He died on 10 January 2024 in Leavenworth County, Kansas, USA.
- Junior Siavii was born on 14 November 1978 in Pago Pago, American Samoa. He died on 13 January 2022 in Leavenworth, Kansas, USA.
- He was the first Medal of Honor recipient from the Vietnam War for his defense of Camp Nam Dong near Laos in 1964.
He enlisted in the Army in 1958 and earned a green beret of the Special Forces at the U.S. Army Special Warfare School at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. He retired from military service with the rank of colonel in 1988.
He received a bachelor's degree at the University of Nebraska and a master's degree in government from Campbell University in North Carolina. - Music Department
Beginnings - Kansas City
Richie Pratt (March 11, 1943 - February 12, 2015, born Richard Dean Tyree) was an American jazz drummer. He embarked upon a career as a professional musician on the New York scene in the early 1970s, it was as much due to an unanticipated sporting injury as anything else. Pratt was born into a musical family (his mother was a church pianist and a brother is saxophonist, Chris Burnett) and grew up in the Kansas City metro city of Olathe, Kansas. He first studied music via the piano, as well as, attended various music camps as a youth prior to attending college as a music major at the University of Kansas.
Prolific Years - New York City
Richie Pratt's prolific tenure as a first-call percussionist on the highly competitive New York City music scene began after he suffered a career-ending injury during his second season with the Giants. His professional tenure as a musician in New York actually began while he was employed as a host at the famed Village Gate.
Pratt began sitting in with Jaki Byard and word began to spread about the big guy from the Midwest who played drums. Bassist, Major Holley, eventually invited Pratt to jam on Sundays at Jacques, which resulted in Junior Mance hearing him play drums and offering him his first paid gig as a drummer in New York. He was sponsored into the American Federation of Musicians, Local 802 by pianist, Ahmad Jamal and eventually worked significantly as a studio session musician, contractor and sideman in numerous contexts.
Initially described in the New York press as a "bubbling cauldron of musical vitality", Pratt subsequently added musical diversity to his cauldron by performing with the American Symphony Orchestra, the Joffrey Ballet, Alvin Ailey; in the Broadway hits: Ain't Supposed To Die A Natural Death; Dude; Raisin; and notably, Pratt was the drum soloist in Broadway's smashing tribute to Duke Ellington, Sophisticated Ladies.
In the traditional jazz arena, Pratt spent over three years as a member of the New York Jazz Quartet, which included Sir Roland Hanna, Frank Wess, and George Mraz. Pratt also accompanied Billy Taylor, Milt Jackson, Milton Hinton, Frank Foster, Monty Alexander, Michel Legrand, Lionel Hampton, Benny Goodman, and Benny Carter among others. The lightness and sensitivity of his drumming has enhanced such legendary vocalists as: Nancy Wilson, Aretha Franklin, Marlena Shaw, Barry White, Melba Moore, the Temptations, Della Reese, Johnny Hartman, Carol Sloane, and Johnny Desmond as well. Formative Years - Football Career - Homecoming
Pratt was born at the University of Kansas Medical Center to Wayne Tyree and Violet Lorraine Jackson Tyree, then later adopted by his great aunt and uncle, John and Willa Pratt in the Kansas City area.
Eventually growing into a rather large and powerful man, he attended the University of Kansas under a full four-year scholarship to play varsity football, majoring in music education.
While enrolled in school and living in Lawrence, Kansas he would not only block for Pro Football Hall of Fame running back Gayle Sayers as an All-Time KU Football Letterman, but Pratt also continued his musical development. He performed in orchestra,jazz and wind ensembles, along with performing in a student USO show that first took him to Hawaii as a performer. He was eventually drafted to play professional football by the NFL's New York Giants.
Pratt was based in Honolulu, Hawaii, upon leaving New York City and continued to be an active performer on the local Honolulu music scene, as well as co-founding and contributing to establishing such local groups as Honolulu Jazz Quartet. Pratt also often worked with touring artists, such as the Russian-born trumpeter, Valery Ponomerov, who make the Hawaiian islands part of their itineraries.
On October 6, 2012, Pratt returned home to the mainland to live in the Midwest and remained based permanently in his native Kansas City metropolitan area.
He died peacefully at his home on February 12, 2015.