March 10
H.L. Mencken (Quote)
“Sunday School: A prison in which children do penance for the evil conscience of their parents.”
— "A Mencken Chrestomathy" (1949)
Annie Laurie Gaylor
© Freedom From Religion Foundation. All rights reserved.
John Rechy
On this date in 1931, American writer and critic John Francisco Rechy was born in El Paso, Texas, to Guadalupe (née Flores) and Roberto Sixto Rechy. He earned a B.A. in English from Texas Western College (now the University of Texas at El Paso), where he edited the school paper. He enlisted in the U.S. Army but was granted an early release to enroll at Columbia University.
Rechy’s novels and essays often documented gay culture. His first novel, City of Night (1963), a largely autobiographical account of the travels of a young hustler, included a description of the Cooper Do-nuts Riot of 1959 in L.A. when LGBTQ community members pelted police with coffee cups and doughnuts to protest ongoing harassment of gays. City of Night became an international best-seller. The Doors incorporated the title in their 1971 song “L.A. Woman.” Lou Reed’s “Walk on the Wild Side” paid homage to its transgender street hustlers.
Rechy has written a dozen novels to date and has had essays and reviews published in The Nation, The New York Review of Books, Los Angeles Times, L.A. Weekly, The Village Voice, The New York Times, Evergreen Review and Saturday Review. He has taught creative writing at Occidental College, the University of California-Los Angeles and the University of Southern California.
Rechy was the first novelist to receive PEN-USA-West’s Lifetime Achievement Award (1997) and has received numerous other writing awards. In October 2019 he was the recipient of the UCLA Medal, the university’s highest honor.
“I dislike religion very much, Christianity in particular (especially Catholicism, which is what I was born into), and find it mean and dangerous — and hypocritical about sex.”
— Rechy, Los Angeles Review of Books (Jan. 17, 2015)
Compiled by Paul Epland
© Freedom From Religion Foundation. All rights reserved.
Jon Hamm
On this date in 1971, actor Jonathan Daniel Hamm was born in St. Louis to Deborah (née Garner) Daniel Hamm. His mother was a secretary and his father managed the family trucking company. His parents divorced when he 2 and he lived primarily with his devoutly Catholic mother. She died of colon cancer when Hamm was 10, which effectively ended his relationship with religion.
He then lived with his father and grandmother and struggled to make sense of it all. “This was the Midwest, my friend. Not New York. I think they gave me a book: ‘How to Deal with the Death of a Parent.’ ” His grandmother, Hamm said later, “was not the nicest person.” (GQ, Oct. 31, 2008)
At John Burroughs School, a progressive, grades 7-12 college prep school, he played middle linebacker in football and Judas in “Godspell.” His father, nicknamed “The Whale” for his 300-pound frame, gradually declined in health from diabetes and died when Hamm was 20 while enrolled at the University of Missouri in Columbia, where he earned a B.A. in English in 1993.
His parents’ deaths put him off religion “fairly early on in a real quick way,” he said. “That was pretty much it for me.” (The Irish Independent, Sept. 14, 2014)
He returned to his alma mater Burroughs School to teach acting to eighth graders for two years, then headed to Los Angeles and got an agent. For nearly four years, he worked as a waiter, and once as a set dresser on a softcore porn film (“very depressing”), before landing a role in 2000 on the NBC drama series “Providence.” That led a role in the indie rom-com “Kissing Jessica Stein” ((2001), co-written and co-starring Jennifer Westfeldt and Heather Juergensen. Westfeldt and Hamm had been dating since 1997 and remained in a relationship for the next 18 years before splitting amicably in 2015.
Hamm’s breakout role was in AMC’s “Mad Men” drama in 2007 in which he starred as the suave but duplicitous ad executive Don Draper. It aired 92 episodes before ending in 2015. The title was short for Madison Avenue, the New York City advertising hub. It won 16 Emmys and five Golden Globes and was the first basic cable series to receive the Emmy for Outstanding Drama Series, winning it for each of its first four seasons.
Hamm’s next role was in the 2008 sci-fi remake of 1951’s “The Day the Earth Stood Still.” He hosted “Saturday Night Live” that year, the first of his four appearances as host. He appeared in three episodes in 2009 on the NBC sitcom “30 Rock” as the love interest of Tina Fey, earning three nominations for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Comedy Series.
He has said his advice to actors is “Don’t be afraid to fail” and “in many ways, it’s the first step toward learning something and getting better at it.” What he’s gotten very good at is racking up acting credits — 134 as of this writing in 2025. Included are voice roles. In “The Simpsons” episode “Donnie Fatso” (2010), he voiced an FBI agent helping Homer go undercover to infiltrate Fat Tony’s mob.
Recent roles include “Top Gun: Maverick” (2022), as a sheriff in the FX black comedy crime drama “Fargo” (2023) and collaborating with Fey in the movie musical adaptation of “Mean Girls.” He started starring in 2025 in the Apple TV+ series “Your Friends and Neighbors,” his first TV lead role since “Mad Men.” The series was renewed for a second season.
His success on the small and large screens has led to lucrative endorsement deals, including for Mercedes-Benz, American Airlines, H&R Block, Apple TV+ and Progressive Insurance. He’s also endorsed without reimbursement several Democratic political candidates and causes generally seen as liberal.
He married Anna Osceola in 2023 in Big Sur, Calif. He had met the 5-foot-11 actress, 17 years his junior, on the finale of “Mad Men” in 2015 when she played a receptionist named Clementine.
PHOTO: Hamm at the Paley Center for Media’s PaleyFest honoring “Mad Men” in March 2014; photo by Dominick D under CC 2.0.
“I don’t get the mystery of faith. I’m too much of a math guy. The numbers didn’t add up so I was like, ‘OK, moving on.’ I don’t need an afterlife; I don’t need a second act.”
— Interview, The Irish Independent (Sept. 14, 2014)
Compiled by Bill Dunn
© Freedom From Religion Foundation. All rights reserved.
