1978 Horatio Alger Award Recipient
Henry L. Aaron*
Baseball Player
Henry Louis "Hank" Aaron, born in 1934 in Mobile, Alabama, was one of eight children in his family. His father was a boilermaker's helper in a shipyard. While still in grade school, young Aaron contributed to the family income ...
2018 Horatio Alger Award Recipient
Gregory E. Abel
Vice Chairman - Non-Insurance Businesses
Berkshire Hathaway Inc.
Executive Chairman
Berkshire Hathaway Energy
Gregory Abel was born in 1962 in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. Before his birth, his mother worked as a legal assistant and then became a stay-at-home mom. His father was in sales. They lived in a working-class neighborhood that w...
2019 Horatio Alger Award Recipient
David P. Abney
Retired Chairman
United Parcel Service, Inc. (UPS)
David Abney, the middle of three children, was born in 1955 in Cleveland, Mississippi. His family moved often, but always within the northern part of the state known as the Mississippi Delta, where the poverty rate is nearly t...
1971 Horatio Alger Award Recipient
Robert H. Abplanalp*
Chairman and President
Precision Valve Corporation
Bob Abplanalp was born in New York's Bronx in 1922 to Swiss immigrant parents. His father was a machinist. Abplanalp attended local schools and later enrolled in Villanova University to study mechanical engineering. He left sch...
2011 Horatio Alger Award Recipient
Roger Eugene Ailes*
Chairman & CEO
FOX News
Chairman
Fox Television Stations Group
Roger Ailes, the middle of three children in his family, was born in 1940 in Warren, Ohio. His father worked in factory maintenance and supplemented his income as a house painter. "My dad was a good guy," says Ailes. "He was an...
2005 Horatio Alger Award Recipient
Buzz Aldrin
Board Member
Buzz Aldrin Ventures, LLC
Edwin Eugene "Buzz" Aldrin Jr. was born in 1930 in Montclair, New Jersey, the youngest of three children and the only boy. His father, an aviation pioneer in the U.S. Army Air Corps, entered the reserves in the late 1920s and b...
1994 Horatio Alger Award Recipient
Joe L. Allbritton*
Chairman of the Board
The Riggs National Bank of Washington, D.C.
Born in 1924 and raised during the depths of the Great Depression in D'Lo, Mississippi, Joe Allbritton worked as a youngster for a local bottling plant, where he earned $1 a day stirring orange juice. When he was in junior high...
1996 Horatio Alger Award Recipient
Byron Allumbaugh*
Chairman of the Board
Ralphs Grocery Company
Byron Allumbaugh grew up in the early 1930s in Chicago, where he watched his parents struggle throughout the Great Depression. His father, a baker, had to work two or three jobs to make ends meet. Even though times were difficu...
2001 Horatio Alger Award Recipient
Linda G. Alvarado
President and Chief Executive Officer
Alvarado Construction
Linda Alvarado, born in 1952 in New Mexico, was the only daughter in the Martínez family. She was raised, along with five brothers, by parents who had high expectations for all their children. Their first home was an adobe, wh...
1987 Horatio Alger Award Recipient
Wally Amos
Messenger of Inspiration
Born in 1936 in Tallahassee, Florida, Wallace "Wally" Amos Jr. had an unstable and sometimes troubled childhood, but he had an innate spirit and gift to view the world with optimism. The most loving person in his life was his a...
