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Jean Lee Latham was a writer of children's books for more than 20 years and specialized in biographical fiction. Ms. Latham was born in Buckhannon West Virginia, but lived for many years in Miami, Florida.

James Albert Michener was raised as the foster child of Edwin and Mabel Michener. The exact date of birth is unknown, although many reference sources cite February 3, 1907, as the birth date. Michener grew up in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, and he attended Doylestown Grammar School. Michener attended Swarthmore College and graduated in 1929, with a degree in English and History (summa cum laude) and a Phi Beta Kappa Key.

Michener taught briefly at the nearby Hill School. He enrolled at St. Andrew's University in Scotland, and also studies art in London and Siena, Italy. Michener returned to the United States during the Depression, and taught at the George School, near Doylestown, from 1933 to 1936. In 1937 Michener received a master's degree from the Colorado State College of Education. He remained in Greeley, Colorado, and served as an associate professor from 1939 to 1942.

Michener served as a visiting professor at Harvard University from 1940-41, and in 1941 he accepted a position on the staff of the MacMillan Company in New York. He volunteered for service in the U.S. Navy in 1942, and served as naval historian in the South Pacific from 944 to 1946. During the course of the war Michener visited some fifty islands and began work on his first novel, Tales of the South Pacific (1947), which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1948. The author returned to MacMillan as a textbook editor when, in 1949, the stage adaptation of Tales of the South Pacific, appeared as the Broadway musical "South Pacific." The successful Rogers and Hammerstein musical, and the subsequent movie, provided a share of royalties that enables Michener to devote all his time to writing.

In 1955 James A. Michener marries Mari Yoriko Sabusawa, his third wife. Michener has travelled the globe extensively and produced a string of best selling works. In 1962, after turning his literary attention to national politics, Michener ran unsuccessfully for the House of Representatives in Pennsylvania's Eighth District. Michener served as a member of the United States Commission on Information (1970-1974) and received the Medal of Freedom in 1977.

Ethel E. Murrell, a lawyer, writer and lecturer, campaigned for the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment. After graduating from the University of Miami Law School in 1934, Murrell opened a Miami law firm, and maintained her practice while travelling frequently to lecture on historical, religious, and feminist topics. During the 1940's, Murrell headed the Married Women's Law Committee of the Florida State Bar Association. The Association drafted and sponsored the Married Women's Act of 1943. Murrell defended the Act before the Florida Supreme Court in 1944 and succeeded in having the constitutionality of the law upheld on all points.

Murrell also participated in a drive for the re-drafting of the Florida constitution and was named a member of the Dade County Bar Association Constitutional Committee. She presented a resolution to the Bar calling for the inclusion of a phrase which would make men and women equal before the law. A dedicated member of the National Woman's Party (NWP), Murrell held the position of Chairwoman in 1952. Murrell, however, resigned one year later as a result of rivalries for leadership and the group's departure from the exclusive goal of the Equal Rights Amendment.

In addition to her political activities, Murrell wrote newspaper columns, magazine articles, college law textbooks and books of poetry which were published in the United States, Europe and the Far East.

María Mendoza Kranz was born in Key West, Florida. She is a member of a third generation of the Mendoza family that emigrated from Cuba to Key West in the early 1870s to escape Spanish colonial rule. Her grandfather, José González de Mendoza, was one of the founders of the school at the Club San Carlos in Key West.

Mendoza Kranz’s father, Enrique González de Mendoza, who was born in Key West, is said to have introduced Cuban rumba to Miami in the 1930s. He also organized the “El Dulce” rumba band that played at the Roney Plaza Hotel in Miami Beach.

Mendoza Kranz was the first Spanish-speaking salesperson employed by S.H. Kress & Co. in downtown Miami and also among the first women to work at a Miami aircraft factory during World War II. Since 1979, she has taught line dancing to Hispanic senior citizens.