podcasts about famous utahns

Famous Utahn: John Warnock and Jerry Buss

Standard

This month we get ready to close out our year of famous Utahn’s with two more Utahn’s. Although they may not be fully “famous” they are definitely influential Utahn’s.

Jerry Buss is probably best known for his ownership of the LA Lakers up until is death in 2013. He was referred to by the NBA as the greatest owner in sports. Born in Salt Lake City on January 27, 1933 his mother Jessie and his father Lydus, who would end up divorced. At age 9 Jerry moved to Wyoming with his family and eventually made his home in California.

Jerry lived many lives from a chemist, being a real estate investor, a poker player, and of course as his legacy lends, the owner of the Lakers. He changed the way we do basketball. This is the cheerleaders you see on the court. The structured premium seating and music! He wanted it to be an “all-out entertainment” spectacle, and we think it worked!

Lakers owner Jerry Buss (1933-2013). (Getty Images)

John Warnock our second famous Utahn for November was much more of a Utahn than Jerry. Born and raised in SLC, he is a Utahn through and through. John is also one of the few people we’ve featured this year that is still alive! John’s legacy will be one of being a co-founder of Adobe! Yes, little ol Adobe! John was born in Salt Lake City on October 6, 1940. From Wikipedia, “Warnock was born and raised in Salt Lake City, Utah. He failed mathematics in ninth grade but graduated from Olympus High School in 1958. He currently lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. He is married to Marva E. Warnock, illustrator, and has three children. Warnock has a Bachelor of Science degree in mathematics and philosophy, a Doctor of Philosophy degree in electrical engineering (computer science), and an honorary degree in science, all from the University of Utah. At the University of Utah he was a member of the Gamma Beta Chapter of the Beta Theta Pi fraternity. He also has an honorary degree from the American Film Institute.” In 2019 Kristin Murphy of the Deseret News did an incredible write up on Mr. Warnock’s visit to Silicone Slopes Summit.

Cool fact here the Adobe typeface “Warnock” is named after him!

2020 has seen many challenges in education and it was a scramble to figure out how to do graduations. John Warnock was the Keynote for the University of Utah.

Some of our resources this episode: Jerry Buss Wikipedia/ Bleacher Report/ Adobe/ UofU/ Deseret News

Music By: Folk Hogan; Bootleggers Dance

Famous Utahn: Frank Zamboni, Rosanne Barr, and Nolan Bushnell

Standard

We are getting ready to wrap up our year of Famous Utahn’s. For Episode 231 we decided to deep dive into Rosanne Barr, Frank Zamboni, and Nolan Bushnell. All of these Utah born people have played a significant part of world pop and sports culture!

Nolan Bushnell, is the epitome of pioneer! Nolan is known as the father of the video game and… AND he created Chuck E. Cheese Pizza Time Theatre. Born in 1943 in Clearfield, Utah. Growing up Nolan did what most northern Utahn’s do, he worked his summers at Lagoon. It was while he was working there he realized how much people loved games and the carnival atmosphere. 1968 Nolan graduated in engineering from the University of Utah. He also attended Stanford (but we prefer the Utah adjacent stuff). In 1972 the gaming box that would take our homes by storm known as Atari, was founded in Northern California by Nolan and his business partner, Dabney. One of our favorite quotes comes from Walter Isaacson’s book, Steve Jobs. “In 1976, Steve Jobs went to Nolan to get him to put in some money in exchange for a minor equity stake in Apple. Nolan remarked, “Steve asked me if I would put $50,000 in and he would give me a third of the company. I was so smart, I said no. It’s kind of fun to think about that, when I’m not crying.” Atari revolutionized the home gaming industry. Come on, who doesn’t love a good game of Pong?! In 1978 he was pushed out of Atari. Enter stage left: Chuck E Cheese. From Wikipedia, It is known that Bushnell had always wanted to work for Walt Disney, but was continually turned down for employment when he was first starting out after graduation; Chuck E. Cheese was his homage to Disney and the technology developed there. In 1981 Bushnell turned over day-to-day food operations of Chuck E. Cheese’s to a newly hired restaurant executive. Nolan stepped down in 1984 from the board after they decided they didn’t like his proposed changes. By late ’84, the company was in bankruptcy.

Bushnell has been involved in other gaming companies, including one that has him on the board of an anti-aging game technology to help with brain function over the age of 35. Nolan has been feature in a few documentaries, awarded a BAFTA as well as many other accolades, and it is said there is a movie about his life in the works with Leonardo DiCaprio. His legacy seeps through the blood of his own children. Venture Beat feature by Dean The DeanBeat, Takahashi interviewed members of the family in 2019.

Nolan Bushnell and 1975 popular game Pong. Photo credit: Time Techland

Frank Zamboni, creator of THE Zamboni machine, was born in Eureka, Utah in 1901. His parents were Italian immigrants. That is where the Utah ties end. However, he did grow up in Lava Hot Springs, ID which is pretty close so we can still talk about him. At the age of 19 his family moved to Los Angeles. Frank and his brother Lawrence started an ice blocking business in the late 20’s to 1939. This was problematic due to electricity and the units needed for refrigeration. They turned their focus and used the equipment to open an ice rink. In 1940 they teamed up with their cousin, Pete, and opened the Iceland Ice Rink. It was 20,000 sq feet, making it one of the largest of its kind., it was even covered with a dome after realized the ice was no match for the So. Cal heat. It was a success because Frank had figured a way to reduce the rippling, from the pipes under the rink, in the ice. Frank got the patent in ’46 and created the machine in ’49. There have been 8 different variations of the machine that we know now. From the Zamboni website, From the 1949 Model A to the 500 Series re-surfacer’s of today, Frank Zamboni’s desire to develop the best possible product for his customers remains as strong in his successors over 60 years later. As Frank often pointed out to rink owners, a comment indicative of his own lifelong mission:

“The principal product you have to sell is the ice itself.”

As of today the ice rink is still operated by the Zamboni family.

Roseanne Barr, born to Jewish parents in Salt Lake City. Barr was spoken about how her parents kept their Jewish heritage secret from their neighbors and were partially involved in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Barr has stated, “Friday, Saturday, and Sunday morning I was a Jew; Sunday afternoon, Tuesday afternoon, and Wednesday afternoon we were Mormons.” While in Utah was when Roseanne found her first stage, in the Mormon church. Rosanne has lived many lives. Stand up comedian, sitcom star with her name sake show Rosanne, talk show host, film star, radio, and even a candidate for presidency in 2012. Her life has not been without controversy and as of 2018, Rosanne still called Utah home.

Some of our resources this episode: Rosanne Barr Wikipedia / Nolan Bushnell website / Zamboni website

Music By: Folk Hogan; Bootleggers Dance

Famous Utahn: Stephen Covey

Standard

This month for our famous Utahn deep dive, we thought we would step into the world of the Covey’s. There isn’t much we can write that isn’t already out there. Known for his motivational writing and trainings, Stephen Covey was born in 1932 and died in a tragic bike accident in 2012. From Wikipedia, He was an American educator, author, businessman, and keynote speaker. His most popular book was written in 1989 and sold over 30 million copies since its publication, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. Overall Stephen wrote 6 books. which include First Things First, Principle-Centered Leadership, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Families, The 8th Habit, and The Leader In Me — How Schools and Parents Around the World Are Inspiring Greatness, One Child at a Time.

In 1996, Time magazine named him one of the 25 most influential people. He was a professor at the Jon M. Huntsman School of Business at Utah State University at the time of his death.

Through the 90’s you may have remembered gathering up your Franklin Covey day planner, with it’s monthly calendar pages, to guide your daily activities. Now Google and Apple are the calendars that direct our lives.

His son, Stephen M. R. Covey wrote the Speed of Trust and his other son, Sean Covey, is still an executive at Franklin Covey. Training and calendars may have evolved quickly over the past few years since Covey’s death, but the principles that Stephen laid with the 7 Habit’s will always be part of corporate and self growth.

To break 7 Habits of Highly Effective Habits down, here is Chris Corinthian in 5 minutes. (or less)

Some of our resources this episode: Franklin Covey/ Wikipedia

Music By: Folk Hogan; Bootleggers Dance

Episode 227 Leveling Multi-level Marketing

Standard

Okay, you knew eventually we would have to talk about it. We have never taken the time, yes we know in 4 years this is blowing our mind too, to talk about *bum bum buuuuuum* multi level marketing.

Episode 227 we break down some of Utah’s biggest multi level marketing companies and why the work so well in Utah. KUTV did a story about MLM’s and Mormons and their relationship to each other. The Daily Herald listed the top 13 back in 2017. Religion News Service also gave a list of 10 reasons Mormon’s dominate MLM’s.

It’s also end of month and we do a run through of the life of author, businessman, public speaker, and teacher Stephen Covey. He is best known for his 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.

We will ALWAYS love your “likes” BUT don’t forget to click that little SHARE button (or retweet) *sharing IS indeed caring* You can find us and subscribe on Soundcloud, Spotify, Stitcher, or Itunes, IHeartRadio, Google Play, and TuneIN. Leave us a review and Follow us on the Twitter @tnupodcast, Instagram @Tnupodcast, or on Facebook The New Utah Podcast

Music By: Folk Hogan. Bootleggers Dance.

Famous Utahn: Marriott Family

Standard

When we picked the Marriott family for this months Famous Utah, we had no idea the incredible impact and how much they were on the forefront of the hospitality industry. From what we learned discussing and researching the Marriott family, their passion for business and customer service is what has given them their almost 100 year legacy.

A little background on Marriott-Slaterville, Utah. Marriott-Slaterville City was originally settled by several Mormon pioneer families, in 1852, including the Richard Slater family, and the Perry, Smout, Marriott and Field families. Many living descendants of these families, including relatives of J. Willard Marriott, pioneer hotelier of the 20th century and founder of Marriott International, still reside within Marriott-Slaterville. Weber State University has an online history of the city and you can read that by clicking HERE.

The patriarch of the family J. Willard Marriott was born at Marriott Settlement (present day Marriott-Slaterville, Utah mentioned above), the second of eight children of Hyrum Willard Marriott and Ellen Morris Marriott. As a child, “Bill”, as J. Willard was called, helped to raise sugar beets and sheep on his family’s farm. At age 13, Marriott raised lettuce on several fallow acres on the farm and the harvest at summer’s end brought $2,000, which Marriott gave to his father. The next year, Hyrum entrusted Marriott, his eldest son, with the sale of a herd of 3,000 sheep, sending him and the sheep unescorted by rail to San Francisco.(from www.marriott.com)

Benjamin Urrutia of the Utah Encyclopedia writes, “In 1927 he opened up a small root beer stand in Washington, D.C., and then quickly upgraded the stand to a restaurant called the Hot Shoppe. He soon opened two others. When the Great Depression hit, he was forced to sell all three. However, he replaced them with two new ones in carefully chosen locations. The Depression also caused the loss of $8,000 of his savings when his bank closed down. But even in these difficult times, chain-store merchandising, with its huge volume and low prices, was thriving. Marriott was determined to apply the same principles to the restaurant business… Marriott could now be said to have invented the drive-in restaurant, now a part of the American urban and suburban landscape. In 1937 he began catered meal service for airlines. Besides restaurants and catering, his empire eventually grew to include hotels, cruise liners, and amusement parks. In 1948 he was elected president of the National Restaurant Association.”

Also of note with Mr. Marriott’s Hot Shoppe restaurants in Arlington, Va., they were the first well-known restaurant chain to abandon the color line in Virginia and open their doors to blacks. The move was greeted with jubilation at the annual convention of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, then taking place in St. Paul.

Lee Benson of the Deseret News wrote, “In 2019, at more than 7,500 Marriott properties around the world, no less than 760,000 people — a number that exceeds the entire population of northern Utah — wear the Marriott employee name badge on a daily basis.”

Through their family history they have developed an incredible philanthropic outreach. They offer community outreach, mentoring programs, funding medical research, and education. You can learn more about their programs on their foundation website.

According to Marriott himself, “You’ve got to make your employees happy. If the employees are happy, they are going to make the customers happy.”

Some of our resources this episode: J Willard Marriott Wikipedia/ Utah History Encyclopedia/ Deseret News/ Marriott Foundation/ NY Times Obituary

Music By: Folk Hogan; Bootleggers Dance

Famous Utahn: Senator and Astronaut, Jake Garn

Standard

Episode 205 we decided to feature in our monthly famous Utahn segment, Senator Jake Garn. By the end of the episode we realized he is one of the FEW Utahn’s (famous and infamous) that is still alive!

Born in Richfield, Utah, on October 12, 1932, Jake Garn would spend the majority of his life in Utah. Garn attended the University of Utah where he achieved a Bachelor of Science in business and finance. He did go on to join the US Navy and the National Guard as a pilot. He served on the Salt Lake City Commission and became Mayor in 1972.

Mr. Garn was a member of the Republican Party, and served as a U.S. Senator representing Utah from 1974 to 1993. At the time of his second election he earned, to this day, the highest amount of votes in a statewide race in Utah. That was 74%. During his time in office he was chairman of the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee and served on three subcommittees: Housing and Urban Affairs, Financial Institutions, and International Finance and Monetary Policy. He also was a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee and served as Chairman of the HUD-Independent Agencies Subcommittee. Garn also served on four other Appropriations subcommittees: Energy and Water Resources, Defense, Military Construction, and Interior. Garn served as a member of the Republican leadership from 1979 to 1984 as Secretary of the Republican Conference.

So, how did Senator Garn become an American senator payload specialist astronaut 1984-1985? That was the official title of his astronaut mission. Senator Garn was asked to take part in his particular NASA flight because he was head of the appropriation committee that handled NASA. Oh, also he had extensive flight experience. Senator Garn was the first member of Congress to fly into space. This happened in 1985. Rumor had it that when training to do the mission that the the space sickness he experienced during the journey was so severe that a scale for space sickness was jokingly based on him, where “one Garn” is the highest possible level of sickness. Senator Garn has said that he wasn’t actually that sick. According to PeoplePill.com, “Astronaut Charles F. Bolden, however, described Garn as “the ideal candidate to do it, because he was a veteran Navy combat pilot who had more flight hours than anyone in the Astronaut Office.”

Photo: NASA

Senator Garn retired in 1992 and continues to speak about politics and America’s space program. We have attached a local news segment with Bob Evans, of Fox13, asking Jake Garn 3 questions. This interview was done in 2018.

Some of the resources we used for our research this episode:

www.astronautix.com / geni.com / peoplepill.com / NASA

Music By: Folk Hogan; Bootleggers Dance

Famous Utahn: Martha Hughes Cannon and Seraph Young

Standard

February 2020 was a very huge celebration for the history of women and voting in the state of Utah. For our Famous Utahn’s we decided to highlight the first woman to vote in Utah, Seraph Young, and the incredible first female Senator, Martha Hughes Cannon.

Utah has a new website resource for research on the incredible women in Utah that shaped 150 years ago and it is called Better Days 2020. They have set up a beautiful website full of information, “the year 2020 is the perfect time to commemorate our history because it marks the 150th anniversary of Utah being the first place where women voted in the modern nation. It also marks the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment, which granted all U.S. women the right to vote.”

Seraph Young was, by most likely happenstance, the very first woman to vote in the state of Utah. She was a pioneer who traveled to Utah with her family from Nebraska in 1847. Seraph was the oldest of 9 kids and was considered a very cultured young woman. She taught at the University of Deseret. Seraph was eventually married to a veteran of the civil war and their marriage would be plagued by death and illness. They eventually moved to Baltimore where her husband met his demise. Seraph was never able to come back to Utah and Better Days writes, “ Like many women, Seraph’s financial struggles worsened after her husband passed away in 1910. She had previously sold off land to make ends meet, so she lived in a rented house with her daughter at the end of her life. After her death on June 22, 1938, Seraph was buried next to her husband in Arlington National Cemetery. Perhaps someday women will place their “I Voted” stickers on Seraph’s gravestone to honor this woman who lived an ordinary life and still made history. “

Martha Hughes Cannon surprised us even more than we thought she would! We knew she was incredible by beating out her husband and becoming Utah’s first Senator, but her brilliance is up there with Philo T Farnsworth! Martha was born in 1857 in Wales and immigrated to Utah to join the Latter Day Saints. (1861) Martha wanted deeply to become a doctor, which was very uncommon for women to accomplish at that time. According to Better Days, “she enrolled in the University of Deseret (now the University of Utah) at age sixteen to fulfill the pre-med requirements. While earning her chemistry degree, she saved money for medical school by working as a typesetter for the Deseret News and then the Woman’s Exponent, where she became immersed in the women’s rights movement.”

Martha earned four degrees by the time she was 25. She set up a private medical practice but then 1884 happened. She married into a polygamous family when Anti-polygamy sentiment was occurring. By 1886 she decided to move herself and her daughter to England in order to protect her husband, prominent Latter-day Saint church leader Angus M. Cannon. Martha would spend years going back and forth in exile to protect her husband. However, when she did return to Utah in 1887 she got involved in the suffragette movement. Better Days writes, “Upon her return, she quickly became a leader in Utah’s burgeoning suffrage movement. Shortly after the formation of the Utah Woman Suffrage Association in 1889, Martha delivered a “well written address” at a large territorial suffrage meeting held in the Assembly Hall on Temple Square, where she argued: “No privileged class either of sex, wealth, or descent should be allowed to arise or exist; all persons should have the same legal right to be the equal of every other, if they can.”

It was all uphill for her from then on! Seraph was the first to actually vote but Martha was the first to register. Utah was the first state to allow women to vote. In 1896 she was endorsed by the Salt Lake Herald for a Democratic seat on the Senate. She made national news because not only was she the first woman elected as a Senator, she also beat out her husband! Martha continued her medical practice while serving. Some of the notable things she created during her 4 year term was the Utah’s first state board of health and a law regulating working conditions for women and girls. Martha’s husband was eventually charged for polygamy because their daughters birth was record of the relationship. In 1904 she moved to California where she became the vice-president of the American Congress for Tuberculosis. Martha passed in 1932 in Los Angeles.

In 2020 we will see a statue of her presented to the capitol building in Washington DC. As Utahn’s, we are super fortunate to have such incredible women build our history!

For more incredible woman that shaped Utah’s history, visit Better Days 2020.

Music By: Folk Hogan; Bootleggers Dance

Famous Utahn: Philo T Farnsworth

Standard

Episode 192 is the start of our new monthly segment, Famous Utahn’s! We decided to start the year off with Mr. Philo T. Farnsworth.

photo: Utah Division of State History

You may have heard that he created the technology that is was made it possible for modern day television, and you wouldn’t be wrong! However, the story goes much deeper. Philo was born in Indian Creek, Utah just outside of Beaver in 1906. When he was a young child his family moved to Idaho which is where he started experimenting because the farm had an electric generator!

Philo had been reading science magazines in his young age and had been reading about ideas that were buzzing from the late 1800’s about television and how to turn a picture into electrical pulses. By the way, he was just 14! It was on his family farm when he was plowing that he got the idea of how the pictures could be created.

Fast forward to 1926/1927, Philo was in San Francisco where hackaday.com reports, ” By 1926 he had convinced a pair of what we’d now call “angel investors” to plow $6,000 into his image dissector idea, and he moved to California to chase his dream. Having already done some development on the tube at BYU, he was ready within a few months to apply for a patent, and on January 7, 1927 he submitted an application simply entitled “Television System.”

During this time, Farnsworth would have a foil. RCA hired Vladimir Zworykin and broadcasting head, David Sarnoff, put him to work knowing that they had to be part of the television creation. Then it just became a messy legal battle. According to Hackaday, “Sarnoff offered Farnsworth $100,000 for his image dissector patent. Farnsworth stubbornly refused this princely sum, setting off a patent war between the boy inventor and one of the largest corporations in the country. RCA sued Farnsworth, claiming that Zworykin’s 1923 patent had priority even though he had never made a working version of his iconoscope, or “reduced to practice” in patent law parlance. RCA won the first round, as well as a subsequent appeal, but in 1934 a judge sided with Farnsworth, partly on the strength of handwritten notes made by Justin Tolman, Philo’s high school chemistry teacher. Tolman had sketched out Philo’s blackboard drawings at Rigby High all those years before, providing support for Farnsworth’s claim that he thought up the idea of electronic television at least a year before Zworykin’s patent was issued.”

Philo had well over 300 patents in his lifetime. His genius was mind-blowing. From Investor.com, In July 1969, when Neil Armstrong used a Farnsworth camera to transmit his moon walk, the amazed inventor turned to his wife and said, “This has made it all worthwhile.” Unfortunately he died in 1971 at the young age of 64. If you want to pay respects, he is buried in the Provo, Utah cemetery. His statue has been standing at the US Capitol building, since 1989. It is about to be replaced with one of voting pioneer, Martha Hughes Cannon. There is a battle between Utah and Idaho about who should get the statue. Obviously we vote Utah!

Some of the resources we used for this episode: The New Yorker. The Official Website of Philo T Farnsworth. HackADay.com Website. Investor.com Website.

Some of the resources we used for this episode: New York Times. The Official Website of Philo T Farnsworth. HackADay.com Website.

Music By: Folk Hogan; Bootleggers Dance