Coolest, in my opinion:
-Michael Keaton
-Gene Kelly
-Joe Maganiello
-George Romero
-David O. Selznick
-Andy Warhol
-Nellie Bly
-Honus Wagner
-Joe Namath
-Dan Marino
-Johnny Unitas
-Joe Montana
-Neil Walker
-Brandon Saad
-Mike Weber
-Bruno Sammartino
-Rachel Carson
-Steve Byrne (he went to my high school! Graduated the year before I got there, but his brother was a year below me)
The Heinz Family, the Rooneys, the Mellons, etc.
And last be certainly not least: Mister Rogers.
After a long history of not much we have had a surprising amount of successful professional athletes in the last couple of decades.
But which ones were born there? 
The only famous person I know of from my hometown (Ormond Beach, Florida) is Brian Kelley, the ‘Florida’ half of Florida Georgia Line.
Vince Carter (NBA player) is from neighboring Daytona Beach.
Well, Chicago is my home town, so that’s gonna be a gazillion folks. I’m guessing perhaps Walt Disney is the most famous of the ones actually born here (a lot of your first-thought-of Chicagoans were not born here.)
But narrowing it down to, say, somebody who was born here and went to my high school, I think The Lord of the Dance himself, Michael Flatley, may well be the most famous. Or if I narrow it down to people who lived or worked in my neighborhood, that may be Jenny McCarthy (she worked at a deli in my neighborhood, but was technically from a neighborhood or two over.)
Bolding mine. I remember when she whacked Charlton Heston in the chops in The Big Country. And when she held a gun on Ahnuld and ordered him to “give me my grandson!”
:smack:
It’s kind of an interesting question to me - what is a home town? I mean I was born in Ithaca, NY. But my parents moved before I was even aware of my surroundings. I never lived more than two consecutive years in any town between birth and 8th grade. From that pointI was in one place for ~10 years. Later after an interregnum I put in another ~10 years in that same place as well. But that was still less than half my life.
Do I have a home town?
Honestly, I have no idea who any of those people are. I’m not one of those people who avoids pop culture, either–I just haven’t heard of any of those people. Perhaps it’s generational. I’m 43.
Do feel like you have a home town? No one is keeping score.
As has already been said, a hometown is what you think it is.
For Kansas, Dwight Eisenhower said "the proudes thing I can say is that I am from Abilene(Kansas)’ Yet he was born in Texas and came to Kansas as a months old infant. It’s where he grew up and went to school, the place he identified with… It’s where he is buried, where the Presidential Library is. That make it his hometown, no matter where he was born.
MLB player Joey Hamilton, Tony Award winner Sutton Foster, judge Avant Edenfield, and Raelette Margie Hendrix.
Due to the local university, several other famous-ish folks are associated with my hometown. But the biggest source of local fame is a little ditty written by a fellow from Thomson, Georgia, and recorded by some guys from Macon (among others.)
(The place where I was born, and lived until I was a teenager, is a couple of hours south. It’s not home. I expect I’ll go back for a couple of funerals. Its only claim to fame is a cousin who has written a couple of nice books, and a seventies-era nuclear power plant.)
Impressed that you included Bruno.
Our oldest son is a native of Brooklyn, the famous people capital of the world.
Except, Bruno was born in Italy.
