1001 People Who Made America - Alan Axelrod [112]
Rusk, Dean (1909–1994) As secretary of state in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, Rusk was a committed “cold warrior” (hardline anti-Communist) who supported the Vietnam War and its escalation. Rusk became the lightning rod for much antiwar protest.
Rustin, Bayard (1910–1987) Rustin combined opposition to racial segregation with a commitment to nonviolence and pacifism. He was the principal organizer of the 1963 March on Washington, which was a high point of the Civil Rights movement and occasioned Dr. Martin Luther King’s great “I Have a Dream” speech.
Ruth, Babe (1895–1948) George Herman “Babe” Ruth started his career in 1914 as a minor league pitcher and was sold to the Boston Red Sox later that first season. He was sold to the New York Yankees in 1920—the team with which he played through 1934. Known as the “Sultan of Swat,” his record of 60 home runs in a major-league season (1927) was unbroken until Roger Maris’s disputed 1961 record (or Mark McGwire’s undisputed 1998 record). He was the first superstar sports celebrity, as famous for his high-living extravagance off the field as for his performance on it. Ruth was an icon of baseball and one of America’s most beloved sports figures.
Ryder, Albert Pinkham (1847–1917) In an era of realism, Ryder was a maverick who created dark, mysterious, profoundly spiritual seascapes and landscapes. A recluse, he produced no more than 150 paintings, which became known mostly after his death. He was an American mystic and romantic, his work entirely original and unrelated to any European (or, for that matter, American) predecessors.
Saarinen, Eero (1910–1961) Finnish-born Saarinen was the son of famed architect Eliel Saarinen and immigrated to the United States with his family in 1923. Eero Saarinen began as a student of sculpture; this profoundly influenced his architecture, which broke with the severe rectilinear lines of the prevailing International School and introduced sweeping curves and a sense of dynamic, organic motion. His masterpiece may well be the controversial Trans World Airlines (TWA) terminal at John F. Kennedy International Airport, New York City (1956–1962).
Sabin, Albert (1906–1993) Born in Bialystock (at the time in Russia, now in Poland), Sabin immigrated to the United States with his parents in 1921. In 1957, he developed an alternative to Jonas Salk’s polio vaccine, using a live but weakened virus rather than a killed virus. Administered orally rather than by injection, the new vaccine provided immunity over a longer period than the Salk vaccine.
Sacco, Nicola (1891–1927) Sacco was born in Italy and immigrated to the United States when he was 17. He worked in a Massachusetts shoe factory and became a left-wing political activist. On May 5, 1920, Sacco and his friend and fellow leftist Bartolomeo Vanzetti were arrested for the robbery-murders of a shoe factory paymaster and a guard. On flimsy circumstantial evidence, they were convicted in 1921. The case became an international cause célèbre as prominent intellectuals the world over protested that the men had been convicted for their political beliefs. On August 23, 1927, after seven years of appeals and incarceration, Sacco and Vanzetti were executed. Riots broke out in England and Germany, and protesters in Paris bombed the U.S. embassy.
Sage, Russell (1816–1906) Sage worked his way up from grocery store errand boy to a major investor in the nation’s developing railroad and telegraph systems, whose growth his management greatly spurred. Sage introduced a key innovation into the U.S. stock market in 1872, “puts and calls”—options