Professional bowler. The first athlete to sign a million-dollar endorsement contract, he was his sport's first superstar and is still considered by many to have been its greatest practitioner. Raised in St. Louis, he was a standout athlete in high school. Following graduation, he served in the U.S. Navy for two years in the South Pacific. After the conflict, he signed a minor league contract with the Philadelphia Athletics but gave up baseball after one season of Class D ball and returned to St. Louis, where he worked in a bowling alley and refined his game. He started to compete professionally around 1951, and his bent-arm delivery style became easily recognized on such television shows of the day as "Jackpot Bowling", "Make That Spare", and "Championship Bowling". In 1958 he became the founding president of the Professional Bowlers Association (PBA). During his career, he won seven tour titles, including five majors, and six-time Bowler of the Year awards. Between 1953 and 1962, he had five 800 series and 13 perfect 300 games in tournament play. Carter signed his million-dollar deal in 1964 with Ebonite Bowling Balls. He was named the greatest bowler of all time in a 1970 "Bowling Magazine" poll, and in 2000 he placed second to Earl Anthony among the 20 greatest bowlers of the 20th. century. He was named to the American Bowling Congress (ABC) Hall of Fame in 1970 and in 1975 became a charter inductee into the PBA Hall of Fame. Carter retired from competition in 1972 due to knee problems and spent his later years in Miami, keeping active with golf and painting. He seldom bowled and died of complications of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease at age 85 in 2012. In an interesting bit of trivia, both his ex-wife LaVerne Haverly and his widow Paula Sperber are members of the Women's International Bowling Congress Hall of Fame. Keeping the dominance of his game in perspective he said: "I really don't think anybody under the age of 65 remembers me. I'm really big with senior citizens. I'm famous because I'm the only guy to have two wives in the Hall of Fame".