This week’s column: The Unknown Celebrities

This week I spent time working on a feature identifying some of the “celebrities” who died this year.
Each one was recognized for their different achievements, but I must admit, a number of them were unknown to me.
Take for instance, Peter Benenson.
At an early age, the young British boy lost his father and was tutored privately by W. H. Auden, an influential poet and writer, before moving to King’s College of Our Lady of Eton beside Windsor for further schooling.
He attended school at Oxford before World War II interrupted his studies. After the war he went to work as a lawyer before joining the Labour Party and taking an unsuccessful shot at politics.
In 1957 he founded JUSTICE, a British human rights and law reform organization.
In 1958 he converted to from Judaism to Roman Catholicism and the next year he moved to Italy to heal from a fall.
In 1961, he was shocked and angered by a newspaper report of two Portuguese students from Coirmbra who were sentenced to seven years in prison for raising their glasses in a toast to freedom.
In May of 1961, The Observer, a liberal and social newspaper in the United Kingdom, published a letter by Benenson, “The Forgotten Prisoners.”
The letter encouraged readers to write letters showing support for the students. Benenson then met with five other men and founded Amnesty International in Luxemboug that July to continue their efforts.
Within a year, AI groups were forming around the world, including West Germany, Belgium, Switzerland, Netherlands, Ireland, Canada, United States and numerous others.
Benenson was appointed general secretary of AI before he step down due to poor health.
Today AI is an international organization with the stated purpose of promoting all human rights enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
The group also works to free all prisoners of conscience and ensure fair and prompt trials for political prisoners.
Amnesty International won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1977 for their work.
Benenson died in Oxford, England, Feb. 25, 2005.
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We can all be thankful to Maurice Hilleman, who developed eight of the 14 recommended vaccines we take today.
He developed vaccines for measles, mumps, hepatitis A, hepatitis B, chickenpox, meningits, pneumonia and Haemophilus influenzae.
Hilleman was born on a farm near Miles City, Montana. His mother and twin sister died at his birth.
He credited much of his later success to working with chickens on the farm as a boy.
In the eighth grade he discovered Charles Darwin and was caught reading “The Origin of Species” in church.
He almost missed attending college before his older brother stepped in and helped him secure a scholarship to Montana State University.
He then won a fellowship to the University of Chicago where he received a doctorate degree in microbiology in 1941.
He quickly went to work with E.R. Squibb & Sons and developed a vaccine against Japenese B encephalitis, a disease threatening American troops fighting in the Pacific during World War II.
After an outbreak of flu in Hong Kong, Hilleman worked nine 14-hour days with a partner to develop a vaccine to kill the new flu strain. Forty million vaccines were prepared and distributed to stop the pandemic that had already killed 69,000.
In 1963, after his daughter, Jeryl Lynn, developed mumps, he went to work to develop the Jeryl-Lynn strain of mumps vaccine, that is still used today.
He was later elected as a member of the U.S. National Academy of Science, the Institute of Medicine, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society. In 1988 he was presented with the National Medal of Science.
Hilleman died in Philadelphia, April 11, 2005.
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Other likely unknowns who passed away in 2005 were:
o Bob Hunter, 63, was a Canadian journalist who founded Greenpeace in 1971, an international environmental organization. Died Toronto, May 2, 2005.
o Elizabeth Janeway, 91, was a writer who was an influential force in the women’s movement. She wrote the best-selling novel, The Walsh Girls. Died Rye, NY, Jan. 15, 2005.
o John Johnson, 85, was born the grandson of slaves. As an entrepreneur Johnson started his business in 1942 with a $500 loan. He built a publishing empire that includes Ebony and Jet magazines. Ebony has a circulation of 1.6 million. Died Chicago, Aug. 8, 2005.
o Georgeanna Jones, 92, was a scientist who established the country’s first in vitro fertilization program and created the first “test-tube baby,” which was born in Dec. 1981. Died Norfolk, Va., March 26, 2005.
o George Kennan, 101, diplomat and historian who devised the U.S. policy of containment to deal with the Soviet Union during the cold war. He believed that instead of declaring all-out war against communist countries, the U.S. should keep the countries in their current state and prevent them from growing more powerful. Died Princeton, NJ, March 17, 2005.
o Jack Kilby, 81, was a Nobel Prize winner for his work in developing the integrated circuit, or microchip. His invention helped usher in the electronic age. Died Dallas, June 20, 2005.
o Peter Malkin, 77, was a former Israeli intelligence agent who captured Adolf Eichmann, a lead architect of the Holocaust in 1960. Died Manhattan, March 1, 2005.
And all cooks everywhere should be thankful to David Dalquist, who invented the Bundt pan in 1950. Dalquist died in Edina, Minn., Jan. 2, 2005.
But as impressive as these and other accomplishments may have been, I’m sure they’re nowhere as important as the actual lives of these individuals to their friends and loved ones.
My sister was a nobody to the rest of the world, but to our family she meant the world.
And while she never invented anything or discovered a cure for cancer, she touched everyone she came in contact with.
So in her memory and the memory of others who have gone before us, I look to 2006 with a hope to make my life count for something and an opportunity to make a difference in the lives of those around me.