COSBY-WILLIAM

Superstar, comedian, athlete, and jazz musician William Henry Cosby, Jr., erved in the U.S. Navy from 1956 to 1961, trained as a hospital corpsman and worked mostly with veterans of the Korean War. On the strength of his naval experience, in 1961 Cosby won a scholarship to Temple University, Philadelphia.

At the U.S. Marine Corps base at Quantico, Virginia, he was trained as a physical therapist, followed by assignment to the Bethesda Naval Hospital, Maryland. There he worked as a corpsman, helping to rehabilitate mostly Korean War veterans, a duty that he liked and at which he excelled. He was also sent briefly on board ship, from Newfoundland to Guantanamo Bay. Finally he was assigned to the Philadelphia Naval Hospital.

With the track team, he traveled around the country and improved his skills, getting his time in the hundred-yard dash down to 10.2 seconds; clearing six feet, five inches in the high jump; and reaching forty-six feet, eight inches in the hop-step jump. He also had a more-than-passing interest in three other sports (football, basketball, and baseball), playing with the Quantico Marine football team in 1956 and playing guard and forward on the National Naval Medical Center varsity basketball team. In 1954 he had tried out for the Baltimore Orioles. During his Navy years, the popular, jocular Cosby made a lot of friends, meeting people who were working hard to better their prospects through the courses offered in the service. Realizing that many of them were applying themselves more than he had ever done--it had never taken much effort for him to do minimally well, thanks to his mental prowess--Cosby came to appreciate the gift he had been born with and resolved to put it to work. He began by earning his high-school diploma while still in the Navy.

Aside from his television work, featuring I Spy, The Bill Cosby Show, The New Bill Cosby Show, The Cosby Show, and Cosby, he has appeared in several movies, including Hickey and Boggs, Uptown Saturday Night, California Suite, and The Devil and Max Devlin. The Cosby Show was the top-rated TV series of the late 1980s and one of the most successful ever, having a lasting positive effect across the racial spectrum.

Cosby has also made numerous records and has remained active in community work. He is the author of several books. He has played the drums since childhood and loves to listen to Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, and other jazz classics. Since 1964 he has been married to Camille Hanks Cosby, who, like her husband, has a Ph.D. in education.