VOA慢速:Remembering Four Interesting People Who Died
VOA慢速:Remembering Four Interesting People Who Died This Year
VOICE ONE:
I'm Faith Lapidus.
VOICE TWO:
And I'm Steve Ember with PEOPLE IN AMERICA in VOA Special English. Today we remember four interesting Americans who died in two thousand seven.
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VOICE ONE:
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| Brooke Astor |
The woman often called the First Lady of New York died on August thirteenth. Brooke Astor was one hundred five years old. The extremely wealthy and famous New Yorker spent much of her life helping the needy in her beloved city.
She was born Brooke Russell in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. She was the only child of a high level military officer. She lived in several countries and liked learning about different cultures.
VOICE TWO:
After two earlier marriages, she married Vincent Astor in nineteen fifty-three. He came from a family that had been rich for at least one hundred years. Among other things, he owned many buildings in New York City.
Brooke Astor became one of the richest women in the world when Vincent Astor died. She also became head of a huge charity organization founded by her husband. He reportedly had told her she would have fun giving away his money.
VOICE ONE:
And apparently she did. Missus Astor gave tens of millions of dollars mainly to places and people in New York City. She said it was the sensible choice because that was where the money had been made. She gave financial support to the city's cultural centers, its poor and disabled as well as to many other smaller charities. She won a Presidential Medal of Freedom for her work.
Brooke Astor also wrote two books about her life. She suffered from Alzheimer's disease in the last years of her life. When she died, the mayor of New York, Michael Bloomberg, said the city would not be what it is today without her support.
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VOICE TWO:
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| Evel Knievel |
America lost its most famous daredevil this year. Evel Knievel rode motorcycles through the air in increasingly dangerous and exciting tricks in the nineteen sixties and seventies. He became a folk hero.
Robert Craig Knievel was born in nineteen thirty-eight in Butte, Montana. As a boy, he was arrested for stealing car parts. He said the police gave him the nickname "Evil," spelled E-V-I-L. He later legally changed his first name to "Evel," spelled E-V-E-L.
Evel Knievel began riding motorcycles in his teens. He said his first motorcycle was a Harley Davidson he had stolen. He was a good athlete and played professional ice hockey for a time. He also served in the United States Army where he became a paratrooper. He made more than thirty jumps from airplanes.
VOICE ONE:
Evel Knievel performed his first public motorcycle jump when he was twenty-seven. He had just opened a motorcycle store and wanted the public to know about it. He lined up several cars along with a box of poisonous snakes and a mountain lion tied up at the end. He drove his motorcycle up a ramp and began the twelve-meter long jump. He landed in the rattlesnakes.
Later, he began performing such tricks all over the United States and Europe. Sometimes his jumps were successful; sometimes they were not. But his shows were always popular. Toy companies sold dolls that looked like him. His life story was told in two movies and a song about him became a hit.
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