He was a professional ice hockey player who played five seasons in the National Hockey League for the St. Louis Eagles, Chicago Black Hawks, Detroit Red Wings and Toronto Maple Leafs.

He holds the distinction of being the first person born in North Dakota to play in the National Hockey League. He was inducted into the United States Hockey Hall of Fame in 1974. He also received the State's highest honor, the Roughrider Award in 1981. • No Books

Born in Dickinson, North Dakota, Stickney attended the North Western Dramatic School in Minneapolis, Minnesota. She sang and danced as one of the four Southern Belles in vaudeville and began acting in summer stock companies including Atlanta's Forsyth Players in the early 1920s before she was married Howard Lindsay.

Stickney made her Broadway debut in 1926 in The Squall and had a string of hits, frequently playing eccentric characters. She was Liz, the mad scrubwoman, in the original nonmusical version of Chicago, and Mollie Molloy, who dives out of the pressroom window, in The Front Page. With increasingly important roles, she moved on to Philip Goes Forth, Another Language, On Borrowed Time, The Small Hours, To Be Continued and The Honeys.

Ms. Stickney received the Barter Award for Best Performance of the Year in 1940 for her role as "Vinnie" in Life with Father, which had been written by her husband, Lindsay, who also co-starred. The award was presented to her by none other than Eleanor Roosevelt. She also appeared in some films and TV programs, and was also the author of a number of poems including "You're Not the Type" and "My Dressing Room". In 1961 she was the second inductee of the North Dakota Roughrider Award. She died a few weeks before her 102nd birthday in New York City. She had no children and left no known heirs. • Dorothy Stickney Books • Dorothy Stickney Movies

Tucker's follow-up release, "Long Tall Shorty", was less successful. Nevertheless, famous musicians that have played on his albums include Louisiana Red, Willie Dixon and Donny Hathaway.

Tucker co-wrote a song with Atlantic Records founder executive Ahmet Ertegόn, called "My Girl (I Really Love Her So)". Tucker left music in the late 1960s, taking a position as a real estate agent in New Jersey, he also did freelance writing for a local newspaper in East Orange, N.J. writing of the plight and ignorance of black males in America and the gullibility and exploitation of African Americans in general by the white dominated media.  Tucker currently has four albums selling in Europe and over the Internet, through the Red Lightnin' record label.

Tucker is also the father of an up and coming blues artist, Teeny Tucker (real name Regina Westbrook); and a cousin of his is Joan Higginbotham, a U.S. female astronaut who launched in November 2006 on the space shuttle, Discovery. He was also friends with Davey Moore, the featherweight who died following a boxing contest with Sugar Ramos; and Johnny Lytle, the renowned vibraphonist. • Tommy Tucker Books • Tommy Tucker Discography

The family lived on a homestead, which today is a tourist attraction. They spent the cold North Dakota winter of their first year under an upturned wagon covered in sod.

A common misconception is that Welk didn't learn English until he was 21. In fact, he began learning English as soon as he started school. The part of North Dakota where he lived had been settled largely by Germans from Russia; even his teachers spoke English as a second language. Welk thus acquired his trademark accent, a combination of the Russian and German accents. He took diction lessons in the 1950s and could speak almost accent-free, but he realized his public expected to hear him to say: "A-one, an-a-two". When he was asked about his ancestry, he would always reply "Alsace-Lorraine, Germany," from where his forebears had emigrated to Russia. • Lawrence Welk Books • Lawrence Welk Films • Lawrence Welk Discography