My Greatest Americans List

So you want to know what my list was like for the 75 Greatest Americans. Well, ok. Here it is, but it's not in order.

I have them grouped instead by what they did: politicians, scientists, military men, etc. Some of the more obscure choices have explanations. I'll be interested to see what the final list looks like when Mr. Prather publishes it.

Also, I do realize that some people like George Washington or Eddie Rickenbacker could fall into other categories, but they are in the category that I was thinking of when I included them on the list.

Politicians:

Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, FDR, Ronald Reagan, James Monroe, John Marshall, John Jay, Andrew Jackson, Alexander Hamilton, Harry S. Truman, John F. Kennedy

Patriots and Military Men:

John Pershing, Omar Bradley, Chester Nimitz, David Farragut, Sam Houston, Davey Crockett, Samuel Adams, Stonewall Jackson, Jimmy Doolittle, John Paul Jones, Hyman Rickover, Paul Revere, George Marshall, Dwight Eisenhower, Robert E. Lee, Curtis LeMay, George S. Patton, George Washington, Douglas MacArthur

Inventors, Designers, and Philosophers:

Ben Franklin, Thomas Edison, Albert Einstein, Werner Von Braun, Jonah Salk, Eli Whitney, Alexander Graham Bell, George Washington Carver, George Westinghouse, Samuel Morse, Clare Johnson (SR-71), John Browning, Samuel Colt, J. Robert Oppenheimer, The Wright Brothers, Thomas Paine

Builders and Businessmen:

Herb Kelleher, Walt Disney, Ray Kroc, C.E. Woolman, Jack Welch, Michael Dell, Eddie Rickenbacker, Cornelius Vanderbilt, Roberto Goizueta, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Bill Allen, William Boeing, Juan Trippe, John Edgar Thompson, John D. Rockefeller, JP Morgan, Andrew Carnegie, Henry Flagler, Donald Douglas, Henry Ford

OK so this section has quite a few builders of transportation empires. It is my firm belief that without the cheap transportation provided first by rail and then by air, America would not be half as prosperous as it is.

Activists, adventurers, and athletes:

Martin Luther King, Jr., Jackie Robinson, Neil Armstrong, Susan B. Anthony, Booker T. Washington, Rosa Parks, Branch Rickey

One oddity here – the inclusion of Branch Rickey. He was the man who had the foresight to sign a baseball player the caliber of Jackie Robinson and the internal strength to stand up to the pressure of being the insider that sold the whites out.

There you go. All 75 of my choices. I realized afterwards that I left off some other great people (Lewis and Clark came to mind almost as soon as I hit the send button) and I’m sure that at some point I’ll think of some others that I left off. But all in all I’m pretty comfortable with the list. Besides it was supposed to be my opinion, right?