FOUND A GRAVE

Roy Acuff (1903 - 1992)

Roy Acuff Roy Acuff was born in Maynardville, Tennessee to Ida (née Carr) and Simon E. Neill Acuff, the third of five children. The Acuffs were a fairly prominent Union County family. Roy’s paternal grandfather, Coram Acuff, had been a Tennessee state senator, and Roy’s maternal grandfather was a local physician. Roy’s father was an accomplished fiddler and a Baptist preacher, […]

Roy Chapman Andrews (1884 - 1960)

Andrews was born on January 26, 1884, in Beloit, Wisconsin. As a child, he explored forests, fields, and waters nearby, developing marksmanship skills. He taught himself taxidermy and used funds from this hobby to pay tuition to Beloit College. After graduating, Andrews applied for work at the American Museum of Natural History in New York […]

Roy DeMeo (1942 - 1983)

Organized Crime Figure. A member of the Gambino crime family, he was a loanshark, car thief, and killer who operated out of the Gemini Lounge in Flatlands, Brooklyn, New York City, New York. Beginning in the mid 1970s, he started dealing drugs and retagging stolen automobiles, accompanied by several neighborhood youths. He then became perhaps […]

Roy Drusky (1930 - 2004)

Roy Drusky Drusky charted in Cashbox with “Wait and See” and “Our Church Your Wedding” in 1959. In 1960, Drusky finally struck it big. At Decca Records, where he worked with producer Owen Bradley, he released a single called “Another”, which he co-wrote. Bradley was a well-known producer who had led legendary country singer Patsy […]

Roy Lichtenstein (1923 - 1997)

Roy Lichtenstein was born in New York City, into an upper-middle-class Jewish family. His father, Milton, was a real estate broker, his mother, Beatrice (Werner), a homemaker. He was raised on the Upper West Side and attended public school until the age of twelve. He then enrolled at New York’s Franklin School for Boys, remaining there for his secondary education. Lichtenstein […]

Roy Orbison (1936 - 1988)

Roy Orbison American singer-songwriter, best known for his trademark sunglasses, distinctive, powerful voice, complex compositions, and dark emotional ballads. Orbison grew up in Texas and began singing in a rockabilly/country and western band in high school until he was signed by Sun Records in Memphis. His greatest success came with Monument Records between 1960 and […]

Roy Roberts (1906 - 1975)

Born Roy Barnes Jones in Dade City in Pasco County, near Tampa, Florida, Roy Roberts began his acting career on the stage, first appearing on Broadway in May 1931 before making his motion picture debut in Gold Bricks, a 1936 two-reel comedy short released by 20th Century-Fox. He appeared in numerous films in secondary parts […]

Roy Rogers (1911 - 1998)

Roy Rogers In 1944, Rogers appeared in his first film with actress Dale Evans. The Cowboy and the Señorita sparked an irresistible on-screen chemistry between the two, and Evans quickly gained the nickname “Queen of the Cowgirls,” to match the moniker of her on-and-off-screen sweetheart. Between the years of 1944 and 1951, they appeared in nearly 30 […]

Roy Ward Baker (1916 - 2010)

Born in London where his father was a Billingsgate fish merchant, Roy Ward Baker was educated at a Lycée in Rouen, France, and at the City of London School. From 1934 to 1939, he worked for Gainsborough Pictures, a British film production company based in the Islington district of London. His first jobs were menial, […]

Roy Wilkins (1901 - 1981)

Wilkins was born in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1901. His mother died when he was four years old, after which Wilkins and his siblings were raised by an aunt and uncle in St. Paul, Minnesota, where they attended local schools. Wilkins graduated from the University of Minnesota with a degree in sociology in 1923. In 1929, […]

Royal Dano (1922 - 1994)

Dano was born in New York City to Mary Josephine (née O’Connor), an Irish immigrant, and Caleb Edward Dano, a printer for newspapers. He reportedly left home at the age of twelve and at various intervals, lived in Florida, Texas, and California. After reaching an agreement with his father, he agreed to continue his education, […]

Royce Kendall (1934 - 1998)

Royce Kendall Culled from the album Let the Music Play, both father and daughter were drawn to the song from the start. As Royce later recalled: “We’d only played the thing once, and we remembered it. That’s a good sign . . . that’s the reason we cut it.” The song was originally the B-side […]

Ruben Cantu (1966 - 1993)

Ruben Cantu grew up with his mother and father, until the age of 14, when the couple split up, with Ruben’s mother moving 20 miles (30 km) away, and Ruben and his father continuing to live in a trailer in a crime-ridden south San Antonio barrio. The neighborhood was home to a loose band of […]

Rubin “Hurricane” Carter (1937 - 2014)

Carter was born in Clifton, New Jersey, the fourth of seven children. He acquired a criminal record and was sentenced to a juvenile reformatory for assault, having stabbed a man when he was 11. Carter escaped from the reformatory in 1954 and joined the Army. A few months after completing infantry basic training at Fort Jackson, South Carolina, he was sent to West Germany. While in Germany, Carter […]

Ruby Dee (1922 - 2014)

Ruby Dee Dee was born Ruby Ann Wallace in Cleveland, Ohio in 1922, to Gladys Hightower and Marshall Edward Nathaniel Wallace, a cook, waiter and porter. After her mother left the family, Dee’s father remarried, to Emma Amelia Benson, a schoolteacher. Dee was raised in Harlem, New York. She attended Hunter College High School and went on to graduate from Hunter College with a degree inromance languages in […]

Ruby Keeler (1910 - 1993)

Keeler was born in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, Canada, to an Irish Catholic family, one of six siblings. Two sisters, Helen and Gertrude, had brief performing careers. Her father was a truck driver, and when she was three years old, her family packed up and moved to New York City where he knew he could get […]

Rudolph Ackermann (1764 - 1834)

He attended the Latin school in Stollberg, but his wish to study at the university was made impossible by lack of financial means, and he therefore became a saddler like his father.  He worked as a saddler and coach-builder in different German cities, then moved to Paris, and then London, where in 1795 he established […]

Rudolph Moshammer (1940 - 2005)

Born in Munich, Germany, Moshammer had an education in retail industry trading. He began to design fashion in the 1960s.  His base of existence was his boutique “Carnaval de Venise” in Munich’s high society street, Maximilianstraße. There he created fashion for wealthy men from furs, cashmere, and silk. With this strategy he attracted the high […]

Ruggiero Boiardo (1890 - 1984)

Ruggiero Boiardo Was a caporegime in the Genovese crime family who ran mob operations in the Newark, New Jersey area. Born in Naples, Italy, Boiardo’s family immigrated to the Newark area in 1910. His first criminal activity involved bookmaking while he worked as a milkman. Boiardo eventually controlled criminal activities in the First Ward section […]

Rupert Davies (1916 - 1976)

Rupert Davies was born in Liverpool. After service in the British Merchant Navy he was a Sub-Lieutenant Observer with the Fleet Air Arm during the Second World War. In 1940, the Swordfish aircraft in which he was flying ditched in the sea off the Dutch coast, following which Davies was captured and interned in the […]

Ruslana Korshunova (1987 - 2008)

Ruslana Korshunova was born in Almaty, Kazakh SSR. Her father, Sergey Korshunov, died in 1992 when she was 5 years old. Her mother, Valentina (née Kutenkova) and her brother, Ruslan, live in Kazakhstan. With different degrees of fluency she spoke Russian, Kazakh, English and German. She was discovered in 2003, when All Asia magazine printed […]

Russell Hayden (1912 - 1981)

Hayden worked behind the scenes in films in jobs such as sound recorder, film cutter, and assistant cameraman before he became an actor in the mid-1930s. At the beginning of his acting career, he mainly starred in Westerns and was voted one of the Top Ten cowboy stars. He played Lucky Jenkins, one of a trio […]

Russell Johnson (1924 - 2014)

Russell Johnson Russell David Johnson (November 10, 1924 – January 16, 2014) was an American television and film actor, best known for his role as “The Professor” on the CBS television sitcom Gilligan’s Island. Early life Johnson was born on November 10, 1924, in Ashley, in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania. His parents were Russell Kennedy Johnson […]

Rusty Hamer (1947 - 1990)

Rusty Hamer in Tenafly, New Jersey, Hamer was the youngest of three sons of Arthur Walter John, Sr., a men’s shirt salesman and Dorothy Hamer (née Chretin), a former silent film actress. He had two elder brothers, John and Walter. As a child, Hamer was nicknamed “Rusty” because of his red hair and freckles. Due […]

Ruth Asawa (1926 - 2013)

Asawa was born in 1926 in Norwalk, California, one of seven children. Her father operated a truck farm until the Japanese American internment during World War II. The family lived in the assembly center at the Santa Anita racetrack for much of 1942, then at Rohwer War Relocation Center in Arkansas.  Following her graduation from […]

Ruth Benerito (1916 - 2013)

Ruth Mary Rogan was born and raised in New Orleans. In an age when girls did not usually go on to higher education, her father made sure his daughters received the same education available to boys. She completed high school at age 14 and entered Sophie Newcomb College at age 15, and later Tulane University […]

Ruth Clifford (1900 - 1998)

Ruth Clifford (February 17, 1900 – November 30, 1998) was an American actress of leading roles in silent films, whose career lasted from silent days into the television era. A native of Pawtucket, Rhode Island, she attended St. Mary’s Seminary in Narragansett, Rhode Island, then, following her mother’s death in 1911, came to Los Angeles as […]

Ruth Cracknell (1925 - 2002)

Cracknell was born in 1925 in Maitland, New South Wales to Charles and Winifred Cracknell. When she was four years old, the family moved to Sydney. She was educated at North Sydney Girls High School and, after graduating, worked at the Ku-ring-gai Council as a clerk. At 17 she was taken to the theatre by […]

Ruth Draper (1884 - 1956)

Ruth Draper was born in New York City, the youngest child of Dr. William Henry and Ruth (née Dana) Draper. Her father, who was born in Brattleboro, Vermont, had the affluence to support a large family with the help of several servants. Ruth Draper’s mother was the daughter of Charles Anderson Dana, editor and publisher […]

Ruth Etting (1897 - 1978)

Ruth Etting (November 23, 1897 – September 24, 1978) was an American singing star and actress of the 1920s and 1930s, who had over 60 hit recordings and worked in stage, radio, and film. She is known as “America’s sweetheart of song”. Her signature tunes were “Shine On, Harvest Moon”, “Ten Cents a Dance” and […]