ey knew the Nazis had seized when they came to power at the start of the war. The question was, where was the art hidden and could they rescue it in time? To that end, the Allies dispatched a small unit of art historians, professors, and other Indiana Jones characters called the Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives corps. They were tasked with finding and recovering the stolen art the Nazis had stashed in castles, salt mines, and other locations. Almost 70 years later, only Harry Ettlinger survives to attend the Hollywood premiere of the movie made to tell the tale of this remarkable World War II mission.
Ettlinger, a German Jew who had the good sense to flee Germany in the 1930s, would return to Europe at the very end of the war to help recover the artwork, much of it stolen from German Jews. Ettlinger and his comrades would recover a total of over 900 works of art. After the war, he went home to Newark, New Jersey and helped his country fight the Cold War by working for a company that designed nuclear weapons.
4 Sarah Collins Rudolph
The Last Living 16th Street Baptist Church Bombing Survivor
On September 15, 1963 at 10:22 AM, a bomb detonated in the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. The bomb was a case of dynamite planted by four Klansmen who had tunneled underneath the front steps of the church. Their cowardly act of domestic terrorism against the African-American church managed to kill four people, all of whom were little girls attending a Sunday sermon. Addie Mae Collins, Carole Robertson, and Cynthia Wesley—all 14 years old—along with 11-year-old Denise McNair died in a failed attempt to stop the growing Civil Rights movement in the Deep South.
It would take over a decade for authorities to begin to track down the KKK members who planted the bomb. Afterward, these four girls were posthumously awarded the Congressional Gold Medal, but a fifth victim of the bombing that day has never been recognized. Sarah Collins Rudolph, younger sister of Addie Mae Collins, is the last injured survivor of that attack. She lost an eye to some flying glass and was in the hospital for months. She never really recovered, as she is still traumatized by the events of that day, but she is the only victim still alive 51 years later.
3 Donald “Nick” Clifford
The Last Living Sculptor Of Mount Rushmore
Drilling rock hundreds of feet up on the side of a cliff face is exciting work, especially when it’s a historic monument like the Mount Rushmore National Memorial in Keystone, South Dakota. It is also exceedingly dangerous work. Amazingly, no workers were killed during the years of drilling and blasting needed to create the monument. That fact is not lost on the last living man to drill and chisel the faces of four great American presidents into a mountain. Donald “Nick” Clifford has the distinction of being the last surviving person who actually worked on the sculpture. The story of how he got the job is almost as fascinating as the work he and the others did to create such a magnificent work of art.
Clifford had been hassling the sculptor of the monument, Gutzon Borglum, for a job since he was 15 years old. He finally got his chance at the age of 17 because of baseball. In 1938, Borglum’s son decided he wanted to form a baseball team for his workers. Knowing that Clifford was an excellent pitcher and infielder, he got added as a ringer to the team, which was called the Mount Rushmore Memorial Drillers. He then badgered his teammates until they finally got him a job.
At first, Clifford worked cutting logs and cranking winches to raise and lower cables at the rate of $0.50 per hour. He was eventually promoted to driller and given a raise of $1 per day. He worked three years on the project. Now, he autographs his own book, Mount Rushmore Q&A, at the Mount Rushmore gift shop and answers any and all questions about the making of the memorial. After all, he is the last one who can.
2 Alcides Ghiggia
The Last Living Winner Of The 1950 World Cup
In the world of professional football, Pele is probably the most well-known South American