Description: [edan-image:id=siris_sic_14623,size=300,left]Born in 1936 in Washington DC, John Robert Edward Kinard would become the first African American director of a Smithsonian museum at the age of 31. Kinard’s circuitous path into museum work took him from development work in Africa to community organizing on Maryland’s Eastern Shore to a dilapidated theater on Nichols Street in DC’s
Description: Smokey Bear, the character, was created by the Forest Service in August 1944 as the lead symbol in its Wildfire Prevention Campaign. However, there was also a real, living Smokey Bear, himself the victim of a forest fire as a young cub. Smokey was born in 1950 in the Lincoln National Forest in New Mexico, where he was found badly burned. Despite the odds for survival, he was