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.

"The Star-Spangled Banner" is the national anthem of the United
States. The lyrics came from the "Defence of Fort M’Henry", a
poem written on September 14, 1814, by 35-year-old lawyer and
amateur poet Francis Scott Key after witnessing the bombardment
of Fort McHenry by British ships of the Royal Navy in Outer
Baltimore Harbor in the Patapsco River during the Battle of
Baltimore in the War of 1812 (below). Key was inspired by the large
U.S. flag, with 15 stars and 15 stripes, known as the Star-Spangled
Banner, flying triumphantly above the fort during the U.S. victory.        

The poem was set to the tune of a popular British song written by
John Stafford Smith.

Francis Scott Key   (1779 – 1843)

He became a successful lawyer in Maryland and
Washington, D.C., and was later appointed U.S.
attorney for the District of Columbia.

On September 13, 1963, Texas-born entrepreneur Mary Kay Ash
launched a cosmetic company in Dallas with her $5,000 life
savings and the help of her 20-year-old son Richard Rogers.

Mary Kay Inc. would become a cosmetic empire with revenue of
more than $3.5 billion and salespeople in dozens of countries.

1982

Mary Kay Ash (born Mary Kathlyn Wagner)
(May 12, 1918 – November 22, 2001)

Kenneth Winston Starr (July 21, 1946 – September 13, 2022)

(Fox News) – Ken Starr, a noted attorney who helped impeach
one president and defended another from the same fate, died
Tuesday at age 76.  

Milton Snavely Hershey
(September 13, 1857 – October 13, 1945)

Milton Snavely Hershey, a German-speaking Mennonite
farmer who turned his passion for confections into a
symbol of American affluence and goodwill, was born
in Derry Township, Penn. 

"Milton Hershey was the rarest of men — both a dreamer
and a builder," notes his biography at the Candy Hall of
Fame, into which the chocolatier was inducted in 1972.

He founded both the Hershey Chocolate Co. and the
Milton Hershey School.

The school, which he opened in 1910 to educate orphans,
thrives today as a prominent free educational institution
serving underprivileged students.

The Hershey Company, known as Hershey’s, is one of
the world’s biggest confectionery manufacturers.