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Sally Ride
First American Woman in Space
I was literally just a couple of months away from getting my Ph.D. in physics when I saw, believe it or not, an ad in the Stanford student newspaper, that had been put in the newspaper by NASA, saying that they were accepting applications for astronauts, and the moment I saw that, I knew that that's what I wanted to do. Not that I wanted to leave physics, I loved it, but I wanted to apply to the astronaut corps and see whether NASA would take me, and see whether I could have the opportunity to go on that adventure.
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Sally Ride
First American Woman in Space
Sally Ride: I was ecstatic. I was thrilled, and my first reaction was probably identical to the reaction of the other four members of the crew who were told that same day. We could not believe that we got our chance to go into space. We were the first four from our astronaut class to get to go, and so we had been in training for four years at that time, building up to this point, and the moment that we were told, it was, "Oh my gosh, I can't believe that I get a chance to do this." And it was only after that, not long after that, but after that, that I thought, "Oh my gosh, I am going to be the first woman to get to go up, representing this country."
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Sonny Rollins
Greatest Living Jazz Soloist
In the musical realm, I had Coleman Hawkins. After Louis Jordan, I began to gravitate to a more sophisticated -- I might put it that way -- not comparing the two, but Coleman Hawkins had a more intellectual approach maybe to music. He played a lot of very difficult things. So he really became my idol. I wanted to play tenor, and had alto before. So anyway, in the musical field, I would say those were my early idols -- saxophone. I always loved Fats Waller, because I heard him as a boy, and I just loved anything he did.
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Sonny Rollins
Greatest Living Jazz Soloist
Sonny Rollins: Once I started, when I was around eight years old or so, I knew that's what I wanted to be. I wanted to be a musician. So I kept playing, I was really at it. You know, there is one thing about me, I was a guy that would practice. Once I started practicing, my mother had to call me to stop practicing. "Come and eat dinner!" Because I was in my own world, and I am like that up to this day really, except that I am older now, and I can't practice like 15 hours a day, but I still have the same inclination and same spirit. But I kept at it, and by the time I was about 14, I guess, we got a little neighborhood band. Then, by the time I was 17, we had a neighborhood band, and I was beginning to get recognized by some of the older people, older musicians. Then, by 18, I made my first recordings. So I was straight, I was on that track. I was on the track to be a professional from that early age, from eight years old I would say.
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Sonny Rollins
Greatest Living Jazz Soloist
If a young person that's a scientist, or wants to be a musician, wants to be a painter, sculptor, and you love it, then, give yourself to it, that's all. This is the only way to do it, that's its own reward really. And if you succeed, I don't know. It's a matter of what you just said, "What is success?" I don't know, but giving yourself to something you believe in, that is success. So I would tell people to really get with what you are doing, with abandon, do your thing and really want to do it, and believe in it, and block out the rest of the world, because you are the world. You are the world, not these other people around you. Your project, your love, your art, that's the world. That's where you have to be.
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James Rosenquist
Pop Art Master
I tried for a scholarship at the Art Students League by sending in drawings. And they wrote me a letter: "Dear James, we are happy to announce that we will give you one year's free schooling at the Art Students League." And I found myself in New York in the fall of 1955 with $350 bucks in my pocket and a room at the YMCA. I checked in to the Art Students League, and I studied with old-timers there -- Edwin Dickinson, George Grosz, Morris Kantor, Vaclav Vytlacil, all those old boys there. That was really an introduction to a private art which was fine art. Where drawing and painting could be applied to advertising, and to whatever, television, whatever, but a really private gesture would be -- a secret, private gesture -- would be your own idea, your own compositions that you enjoyed yourself. And to do something, to paint something or draw something or do something, to prove to oneself that you actually had the idea, would seem to be the important. Otherwise, the idea remained a concept, and no one could understand what you were thinking. So I think it was really like -- not a self-analysis -- but it's really thinking you have some strange, unusual idea and can talk about it and talk about it, but it doesn't mean anything unless you actually can see something physical about that. So that's what that meant to me at that time.
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James Rosenquist
Pop Art Master
I remember the pure -- just the feeling of having things around in my studio that I liked, and I really didn't want to sell them, back in 1960 and '61. That was my environment that I made, and it didn't take much money to live, but I never thought that I could ever have enough money to get married, to own a car. Maybe a car, but not a house or anything like that. I know there was a question that I thought you were going to ask me about. Did I think that I would as successful as I am, or whatever? And I certainly didn't think so, because I didn't know how to qualify success. I didn't know. Success to me was just to be able to understand. Success was a very, very private matter, of having the wherewithal to very simply express an idea.
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