Jack lord death biography of rayon
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Danielle Steel's Post
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Arkansas Visionary: B.J. Sams, The Voice
Pictured above: Arkansas broadcasting legend B.J. Sams started out in radio — B.J. the DJ.
Meeting Hall-of-Fame television anchor B.J. Sams is an experience exactly like most people might imagine. Genteel and friendly, his shock of white hair and trademark well-bottom baritone trip the memory immediately to decades of broadcasts into thousands of homes.
If meeting Sams for the first time feels easily familiar, hearing his story for the first time is anything but. A tale of almost unimaginable heartbreak, loss and, at last, redemption, it is a story he tells easily, even as its deeply personal notes strike chords that are sometimes hard to hear.
Sams’ story begins in 1935 in Elizabethton, Tenn., in the eastern part of the state. Born the second eldest of four boys, his upbringing might have been typical of many of his neighbors but seems spartan by today’s standards.
“My father was a State Farm agent. My mother worked at a plant the
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The Life and Graphic Arts Collection of Fred Grunwald
When my parents agreed that our family should leave Nazi Germany, a tug-of-war developed between them as to the destination. My father, as breadwinner for the family, wanted to follow his exports to Bogotá, Colombia, where (as his business friends advised him) it would be relatively easy to start a successful garment factory. My mother wanted to settle in the United States. She thought of Bogotá and the country of Colombia as a cultural backwater, while in the United States the fine arts and belles lettres were flourishing and the educational institutions included universities of world renown. My father, on the other hand, had seen newsreels of American factories—newsreels that depicted their efficiency and productivity. He was afraid that he might not be able to function at such a hectic pace.
My parents then agreed to take a two-months' trip to Bogotá and see which of these opinions agreed with the facts. The trip settled