By Alan Sorensen
I want to get paid for those three hours I spent in the tuxedo Tuesday night. To do that, I have to write something about the evening so it can be accounted for as research.
Well, Doug was partly right. A lot of women told me how spiffy I looked in his tux. Unfortunately, none of them asked me to breakfast, so I can honestly say, in a polite way, that he overstated the outfits impact on the opposite sex.
Another thing that I got interested in this week is the concept of choosing the 100 most influential people of the millennium. Some TV people plan to announce their selections soon.
I did the math and discovered thats just one person every 10 years for the whole planet.
I dont know about you, but my knowledge of the world is a bit parochial and very biased. The teachers I had over the years tended to accentuate the occidental.
Anyway, I made a list and you can make one, too. Mines in no particular order. (Brothers and bands count as one.) In some instances, the characters were obscure, even to me, so I added their feats, inventions, or discoveries for clarification. Here goes:
Mohandas Gandhi, Albert Einstein, George Guess Sequoia, Baron Pierre de Coubertin, Henry Ford, Karl Marx, Marco Polo, Leonardo Da Vinci, William
Shakespeare, Galileo Galilei, Napoleon Bonaparte, Adolph Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Martin Luther, Martin Luther King, Wernher Von Braun, Mao Tse Tung, Ho Chi Minh, Abba Eban, Nelson Mandella, Louis
Pasteur, Pele, Jim Thorp, Amelia Erhart, Will Rogers, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, Genghis Khan, Thomas Alva Edison, Wiley Post, Marie Curie, Baron Paul von Reuter, Sigmund Freud, Christopher Columbus, Ferdinand Magellan, Ren Descartes, Isaac Newton, FDR, Eleanor Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, Jeff Burton (snowboard), Jonathan Swift, Anton Dvork, John D. Rockefeller, Bayer, Max Factor, George Eastman, John James Audubon, Hans Christian Anderson, Grimm brothers, Dr. Seuss, Alexander Fleming, Adolphus Busch (beer and penicillin man), Walt Disney, Mozart, Tchaikovsky, Midgely (refrigeration pioneer), Robert Fulton, Hershey (chocolate), Andrew Carnegie, Johannes Gutenberg, Peter the Great, Erik the Red, David Livingstone, Tecumseh, JFK, Commodore Matthew Perry, Admiral Richard Evelyn Byrd, Niccol- Machiavelli, Samuel Pepys, Albert Camus, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Mark Twain, Benjamin Franklin, Yury Gagarin, Steven Jobs, Buckminister Fuller, Woodrow Wilson, Geoffrey Chaucer, Clara Barton, Florence Nightingale, Amy Semple McPherson, Alexander Graham Bell, Wright brothers, Thomas Paine, Charles Goodyear, Albert Schweitzer, Abraham Lincoln, H.G. Wells, Joe Lewis, Herbert Spencer, Robespierre, Oliver Cromwell, Thomas More, Agatha Christie, Jonas Salk, Margaret Mead, Roger Bannister, Emperor Hirohito, the Beatles, and my advanced grammar teacher, Dr. Robert Goetzman, makes 101.
The list should allow for only 98 people, because everyone choosing his favorites should be required to put down his own parents. Whether good or bad, there or not, parents still carry the single greatest influence on all of us.
Others I wanted to include but dropped because I thought they were borderline at best were: Neil Armstrong, Levi Strauss, Dr. Christiaan Barnard, Edwin Land, Carl Jung, Arthur Ashe, Jeanette Rankin, James Monroe, Big Bear, Cochise, Sacajawea, Joseph, Crazy Horse, and Bill W. and Dr. Bob.
HPD Chief Mike Shortell came up with a few great ones off the cuff: Guglielmo Marconi, Nikola Tesla, George Washington Carver, Mother Teresa, Sir Edmund Hillary, and Babe Didricksen Zaharias.
Matt B. Walen (Matt B. Good) nominated Audie Murphy, with Hugh Hefner a close second.
Heres hoping that at least half our selections make it to the list the experts are calling the real thing.
Next Friday is Oct. 1, the date the east end list goes to press.
