Willie Spears (1920 - 1978)

Willie's immediate relatives including parents, siblings, partnerships and children in the Spears family tree.

Willie's Family

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We currently do not have photos of Willie Spears. Below are potential family photos that share Willie's last name or surname. Pictures really do say a thousand words. Add photos of Willie during various points of his life

Ella M Spears

Thomas Spears

Alexander Thomas Spears

Katie and Lorren Spears?

Unknown Spears boy

Angeline &John Spears

Thomas & Saviller Spears

Lewis and Floyd Spears

Spears And Suddeth

Garrison School class, 1968-69, gr 4/5, named

Roger Edward Spears

Spears Sisters

Hugo, Oklahoma

William Zachariah Taylor Spears family

James Riley Spears and Sarelda Johnson

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Refresh this page to see various historical events that occurred during Willie's lifetime

In 1920, in the year that Willie Spears was born, Italian born factory worker Nicola Sacco and fish peddler Bartolomeo Vanzetti were picked up by police on May 5th in connection with the April 15th murder and robbery of a guard and a paymaster at the Slater and Morrill Shoe Company in South Braintree, Mass. Although in later years they were thought to be innocent, they were anarchists and were convicted of the crime and put to death.

In 1943, Willie was 23 years old when on March 31st, the Broadway musical Oklahoma! opened. Written by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II (the first of their string of successful collaborations), audiences loved it. The musical ran for 2,212 performances originally and was made into a movie in 1954.

In 1955, he was 35 years old when on September 30th, movie star James Dean, 24, died in a car accident. He was headed in his new Porsche 550 to a race in Salinas California when, traveling at 85 mph, he collided with a 1950 Ford Tudor, also speeding, driven by a 23 year old college student. Dean died, his passenger and the other driver survived.

In 1961, by the time he was 41 years old, on August 13th, East Germany began erection of what would become the Berlin Wall between East and West Berlin. In one day, they installed barbed wire entanglements and fences (called Barbed Wire Sunday in Germany). On August 17th, the first concrete elements and large blocks were put in place.

In 1978, in the year of Willie Spears's passing, on November 18th, Jim Jones's Peoples Temple followers committed mass suicide in Jonestown, Guyana - where they had moved, from San Francisco, as a group. Jones was the leader of the cult and ordered his followers to drink cyanide-laced punch, which they did. Whole families (women and children included) died - more than 900 people in all.