Samuel E. Stetson

Dr. Samuel E. Stetson was born in Richmond, Virginia on June 1, 1924 and raised in the Washington, DC metropolitan area, where he graduated from Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School. He served in the Army Air Force during World War II as an armorer for P-39 Air Cobra fighter planes. He later joined the Air National Guard and served in Korea during the war as an armorer for F-86 Sabre jets. After the war, Dr. Stetson studied engineering at the University of California, and sailed the Atlantic Ocean as a member of an amateur crew on an 83-foot former Coast Guard cutter converted into a private yacht. Dr. Stetson was known and respected globally for his knowledge of erotic cinema and artwork, and his tireless research remains an inspiration to others working in the field. In his book "Only the Best," the late author Jim Holliday referred to Stetson as "my mentor...a lifelong collector of erotica of all forms, and a student of human sexual behavior." Dr. Stetson also contributed to, and appeared in, the 1999 Channel 4 television documentary "Pornography: A Secret History of Civilisation." In 2006, Dr. Stetson posthumously received the Adult Video Association of America's "Hardcore Herodotus" award for his contributions in charting the history of erotic art in the twentieth century.