People lost to history

[Kaleva]

Every once in awhile when reading about someone or about an event on the internet, a person who played a supporting role fades out and for all practical purposes, disappears from history.

In this thread, I'd like to talk about such people.

[Kaleva]

1. Herbert Walton "Herb" Gleason

Father of Jackie Gleason.

" On the night of December 14, 1925, Gleason's father disposed of any family photos in which he appeared; just after noon on December 15, he collected his hat, coat, and paycheck, and permanently left his family and job at the insurance company. Once it became evident that he was not coming back, Mae went to work as a subway attendant for the Brooklyn–Manhattan Transit Corporation (BMT)"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackie_Gleason

As far as I could find out, no one knew what became of Herbert Gleason.

[lastlib]

2. Whatever happened to Fawn Hall?

Oliver North's secretary and document-shredder par excellence? I think I last heard, she had an addiction to cocaine, and wound up in rehab? Did she ever come out?

[Kaleva]

3. Army Lt. Coleman Peterson and his wife Charlotte Peterson

The events surrounding Lt. Peterson's murder trial was the basis for the book and movie "Anatomy of a Murder".

"Anatomy of a Murder is a 1959 American courtroom drama crime film produced and directed by Otto Preminger. The screenplay by Wendell Mayes was based on the novel of the same name written by Michigan Supreme Court Justice John D. Voelker under the pen name Robert Traver. Voelker based the novel on a 1952 murder case in which he was the defense attorney.[1]"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatomy_of_a_Murder

The couple left Upper Michigan after the trial and divorced but then disappeared. I have read some articles saying that Lt. Peterson may have died in a plane crash in Alaska some years after the trial but I haven't found any info verifying that. As for Charlotte, there is nothing.

[Dca10468]

13. Charlotte Peterson

Charlotte was my dad's half sister. Charlotte was born 1910 and her mother died in 1927. Her father, my grandfather, remarried in 1928.
Charlotte married again and died in Texas in 1975.

[radical noodle]

14. Welcome to DU!

[gopiscrap]

15. welcome to DU

[Kaleva]

16. That's interesting!

Could you say where she is buried?

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

4. Fascinating thread.

I just wish I had something to contribute.

[Kaleva]

5. I would love having a job on doing research on missing historical figures.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

7. Oh, yes.

I can name a couple of relatively well-known disappearances, although they happened long enough ago they've dropped out of general knowledge. Judge Crater comes to mind. He disappeared in 1930 after having dinner with some friends. No trace of him was ever found. The wiki article on him is interesting.

Somewhat more in line with what this thread is about is the daughter of Katherine Parr, Henry VIII's last wife and widow. Shortly after Henry's death she married Thomas Seymour and gave birth to a daughter in September, 1548. Katherine died shortly after, and the baby was sent off to live with a relative and simply disappears from history. It's always been presumed she died in infancy, but were I a writer with a lean to historical fiction, I'd assume she lived and would write a novel having her on the outskirts of the next fifty years or so of English history.

[Kaleva]

6. Etta Place-companion of the Sundance Kid

"Etta Place (c.1878 – ?) was a companion of the American outlaws Butch Cassidy (real name Robert LeRoy Parker) and the Sundance Kid (Harry Alonzo Longabaugh), both members of the outlaw gang known as the Wild Bunch. Principally the companion of Longabaugh, little is known about her; both her origin and her fate remain shrouded in mystery.

The Pinkerton Detective Agency described her in 1906 as having, "classic good looks, 27 or 28 years old, 5'4" to 5'5" [163–165 cm] in height, weighing between 110 and 115 lb [50 and 52 kg], with a medium build and brown hair.""

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etta_Place#Fact_timelines_generally_accepted_by_historians

She may have been last seen in 1909 when she was about 31 years old.

[discntnt_irny_srcsm]

9. There is a 1974 TV movie...

...Mrs Sundance: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0071868/?ref_=nv_sr_4

Stars: Elizabeth Montgomery, Robert Foxworth, L.Q. Jones

The girlfriend of the Sundance Kid is on the run with a price on her head, when she hears rumors that the Sundance Kid may still be alive.

[eppur_se_muova]

8. If only that would happen to Newt Gingrich.

Journos keep turning the cameras on him and giving him a microphone, and he keeps opening his big mouth to give his utterly irrelevant opinions. Only his sugar daddy cares.

[Kaleva]

10. Tiare Jones. The 2 year old in this iconic photo.

http://img.xcitefun.net/users/2008/10/15095,xcitefun-fall.jpg

According to a May 2, 1999 article in the Des Moines Register, Tiare Jones was living in a half way home working on regaining custody of her three youngest children.

"Tiare Jones, then 2, escaped serious injury. this time, she said, she is determined to succeed. As a condition of regaining custody of three of her children that were taken by the Department of Social Services, she is liv ing in the halfway house in suburban Boston. She already has ..."

https://www.newspapers.com/newspage/131094425/

I haven't been able to find anything on her since that article was published.

Robert O'Neil, the fire fighter on the ladder, died in 2005.

"Few who saw the images can forget them. It was 1975. Fire was raging through an apartment building on Marlborough Street in the Back Bay. A firefighter stood on a fire escape shielding 19-year-old Diana Bryant and her 2-year-old goddaughter Tiare Jones from the flames. Smoke billowed as a fire engine lifted an aerial ladder to the trio. Just as the ladder neared arm's length, the fire escape collapsed.

The girl and woman fell. Bryant died, Jones was seriously injured. Boston Herald photographer Stanley Forman captured it all on film in a series of award-winning photographs, including one that earned a Pulitzer Prize.

Robert O'Neill, the Boston firefighter who managed to reach the ladder and escape, died of esophageal cancer Monday in South Shore Hospital in Weymouth. The Braintree resident was 84."

http://archive.boston.com/news/globe/obituaries/articles/2005/01/27/robert_oneill_firefighter_at_center_of_rescue_attempt/

[Kaleva]

11. Connie Converse

Arguably the earliest performer in the singer-songwriter genre. Her only known public performance was a brief television appearance in 1954 on The Morning Show on CBS with Walter Cronkite.



By the early 1970's, she was reportedly burnt out and considered herself to be a failure. In 1974, she loaded up her VW Beetle with her belongings and drove off into history and has not been seen or heard of since.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connie_Converse

[thucythucy]

12. Licorce McKenzie

She was English, but disappeared in America.

She was a vocalist with the Incredible String Band during their heyday in the '60s, performed with them at Woodstock. After leaving the band she moved to America, and was last seen (I think) in the early 1970s, hitch hiking in Arizona. Not heard from since.

[RealityChik]

17. Smedley Butler

When Prescott Bush and all his Nazi sympathizers organized a coup to overthrow FDR and install a Nazi style government as payback for FDR confiscating all their ill-gotten gains through investments that financed Hitler and the Nazis in Germany prior to WW!!.

The Army General, Smedley Butler, who was chosen by Bush et al to lead the military coup and overthrow, played along while he gathered evidence and right before the coup provided the smoking gun evidence that stopped the coup and prevented the FDR (my FAVORITE president of all time!) overthrow. Butler couldn't be threatened or bribed and chose to tell the truth than to sell out his country.

There are tons of articles about him and I read:
Devil Dog: The True Story of the Man that Saved America - David Talbot
https://www.amazon.com/s?i=stripbooks&k=devil%20dog%20smedley%20butler&ref=nb_sb_noss&url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks

Wikipedia actually has full-featured documentation on the background, the issues, the players and the events around this. Good starting point for further research.

[Kaleva]

18. Prescott Bush worked for W. Averell Harriman who had a number of businesses seized during WWII

"Harriman's banking business was the main Wall Street connection for German companies and the varied U.S. financial interests of Fritz Thyssen; who was a financial backer of the Nazi party until 1938. The Trading With the Enemy Act (enacted on October 6, 1917)[4] classified any business transactions for profit with enemy nations as illegal, and any funds or assets involved were subject to seizure by the U.S. government. The declaration of war on the U.S. by Hitler led to the U.S. government order on October 20, 1942 to seize German interests in the U.S. which included Harriman's operations in New York City.

The Harriman business interests seized under the act in October and November 1942 included:[citation needed]

Union Banking Corporation (UBC) (from Thyssen and Brown Brothers Harriman)
Holland-American Trading Corporation (from Harriman)
Seamless Steel Equipment Corporation (from Harriman)
Silesian-American Corporation (this company was partially owned by a German entity; during the war the Germans tried to take full control of Silesian-American. In response to that, the American government seized German-owned minority shares in the company, leaving the U.S. partners to carry on the portion of the business in the United States.)
The assets were held by the government for the duration of the war, then returned afterward; UBC was dissolved in 1951."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Averell_Harriman#War_seizures_controversy

W. Averell Harriman was a prominent Democrat who had close connections with FDR, Truman and JFK and no story about Prescott Bush is complete without also discussing Harriman.