John R.
John R. (born John Richbourg, August 20, 1910, Manning, South Carolina; died February 15, 1986, Nashville, Tennessee) was an American radio disc jockey who attained fame in the 1950s and 1960s for playing rhythm and blues music on Nashville radio station WLAC. He was also a notable record producer and artist manager.
Richbourg was arguably the most popular and charismatic of the four announcers at WLAC who showcased popular African-American music in nightly programs from the late 1940s to the early 1970s. (The other three were Gene Nobles, Herman Grizzard, and Bill "Hoss" Allen.) Later rock music disc jockeys such as Alan Freed, Wolfman Jack, and others mimicked Richbourg's practice of using speech that simulated African-American street language of the mid-twentieth century.
Richbourg's highly stylized approach to on-air presentation of both music and advertising earned him popularity, but it also created identity confusion. Because Richbourg and fellow disc jockey Allen used African-American speech patterns, many listeners thought that both announcers were actually African-Americans. The disc jockeys used the mystique to their commercial and personal advantages until the mid-1960s, when their racial identities as Euro-Americans became public knowledge.
John R. Opel
John Roberts Opel (January 5, 1925, in Kansas City, Missouri – November 3, 2011, in Fort Myers, Florida) was a U.S. computer businessman. He served as the president of IBM between 1974 and 1985. He then served as the CEO of IBM from 1981 to 1985and he was chairman of IBM between 1983 and 1986. A discussion he had with Mary Maxwell Gates while they were both serving on the board of United Way resulted in an IBM contract being placed with her son Bill's company Microsoft to create an operating system for IBM's first personal computer.
Born in Kansas City, Missouri, Opel grew up in Jefferson City, Missouri. He majored in English at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri. He then fought in the Philippines and Okinawa in World War II and earned a MBA degree from the University of Chicago in 1949.
Upon graduation, Opel had two job offers, one to rewrite economics textbooks, and the other to take over his father’s hardware business. While taking a fishing trip with his father and a family friend who worked for IBM, he was offered a third job as a salesman in central Missouri, and accepted.
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