Woody Guthrie

Charley and Nora Guthrie named their son after the Democrat elected president that year. Woodrow Wilson Guthrie knew hard times as a youngster (his house burned down, his sister Clara burned to death, his father's small-town business and political careers never went anywhere, his mother suffered from undiagnosed Huntington's Disease and was declared insane), but he enjoyed performing (dancing, playing harmonica, writing songs) and learning (he read voraciously in the public library). In 1933 he married Mary Jennings, five years his junior, with whom he would have three children.

In 1935 he joined the Oakies and Arkies driven to California by the Dust Bowl. His songs went from describing the tragedy of the migrants to urging their unionization. Though he wrote a column for the Weekly People, he never joined the Communist Party. When Will Geer got a part in the play "Tobacco Road" he invited Woody to join him in New York where he met Pete Seeger, Lee Hays, Leadbelly, Cisco Houston. He was commissioned to write songs for a never-completed documentary on Washington State's Grand Coulee Dam, and it was in the Pacific Northwest that his family left him.

Back in New York in 1940, Woody joined Pete Seeger's Alamanc Singers and married Martha Graham dancer Marjorie Mazia.

His autobiography, Bound for Glory, was published in 1943. He served in the Merchant Marine in World War II, and three ships were torpedoed from under him.

In 1947 his and Marjorie's daughter, Cathy, was burned to death in an apartment fire. They had three more children: Arlo, Joady and Nora.

In the 1950s he experienced bouts of irrational behavior and was often unable to play his guitar; his condition was ultimately diagnosed as Huntington's Disease.

In 1953 he married for a third time, to Anneke Van Kirk. They had a child, Lorinna Lynn Guthrie. When Anneke and Guthrie divorced, their daughter was adopted by a couple they knew, and did not have any further contact with Guthrie.

February 22, 1954: daughter: Lorinna Lynn Guthrie, with Van Kirk.

Was Bob Dylan's idol and mentor. Dylan visited him many times in the hospital in the last years of his life, and modeled his own folk-writing style after Guthrie's. The first Dylan-written song ever released was a tribute to his hero, 'Song to Woody', which appeared on his self-titled 1962 debut album.

Inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1970.

Lorinna died prematurely (at age 19) in 1973, in a car accident in California.

Elected to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (under the category Early Influences) in 1988.

Was featured in 1998 on a 32-cent U.S. postage stamp in the Legends of Folk Singers stamp series.

His revue, "The Life & Music of Woody Guthrie" at the Northlight Theater in Chicago, Illinois was nominated for a 2013 Equity Joseph Jefferson Award for Revue Production.