John Ernst Steinbeck Jr. (1902 – 1968)

Writer John Steinbeck was presented the U.S. Medal of Freedom
on September 14, 1964. Steinbeck had already received numerous
other honors and awards for his writing, including the 1962 Nobel
Prize and a 1939 Pulitzer Prize for Grapes of Wrath.

Steinbeck, a native Californian, studied writing intermittently at
Stanford between 1920 and 1925 but never graduated. He moved
to New York and worked as a manual laborer and journalist while
writing his first two novels, which were not successful. He married
in 1930 and moved back to California with his wife. His father, a government official in Salinas County, gave the couple a house to
live in while Steinbeck continued writing.

His first novel, Tortilla Flat, about the comic antics of several
rootless drifters who share a house in California, was published
in 1935. The novel became a financial success.

National Dog Day was established by Colleen Paige who choose
August 26 because that was the day her family brought home her
first dog.

CAMILLE
BOHANNON

    
        
Camille Bohannon
     
   

Robin McLaurin Williams (July 21, 1951 – August 11, 2014)

Williams is regarded as one of the greatest comedians of
all time.

On July 11, 1960, the 34-year-old novelist Nelle Harper Lee
published her first novel, To Kill a Mockingbird.

The book was instantly successful. In the United States, it
is widely read in high schools and middle schools. To Kill
a Mockingbird has become a classic of modern American
literature, winning the Pulitzer Prize, was translated into 
some 40 languages and has sold more than 40 million
copies.

Nelle Harper Lee (April 28, 1926 – February 19, 2016)