Commander Adama

Commander Adama is the commander of the great military vessel Battlestar Galactica, commander of the refugee fleet, and military commander of the evacuees of the Twelve Colonies. He is also the spiritual leader of the surviving colonists, leading the quest for Earth.
Adama is a native of the planet Caprica, which is where he graduated from the military academy of "The Colonial Service." In a novelization based on an episode of the series, an excerpt from his journal says he served aboard the Battlestar Cerberus in his younger years and named his son Apollo after a friend who died fighting the Cylons.
Adama was married to Ila. The two had a sea-side house on a hill on the planet of Caprica. However, Adama spent most of his married life in space fighting the Cylons, leaving Ila behind on Caprica.
They had three children, the oldest son Apollo (fighter pilot based on the Galactica), a daughter Athena (bridge crew member of the Galactica, fighter pilot, teacher) and a younger son Zac (fighter pilot).
Both his wife Ila and his son Zac were killed in the Cylon attack on the Twelve Colonies.
Soon after the destruction of the Twelve Colonies Apollo married Serina near the planet Kobol. So Adama became step-grandfather of Boxey. Serina died on Kobol.
Adama considers Starbuck (who is an orphan) as member of his family.
Adama flew with his executive officer Colonel Tigh in their younger days, and later served with Commander Kronus aboard the battlestar Rycon.
As well as being a career military officer, Commander Adama is also a member of the Council Of The Twelve, the governing body of the Colonies. He was as much a politician as a military commander; evidently, the Colonial Service Academy offered courses in political science and diplomacy as well as military training.
From the start, Adama was mistrustful of the Cylons at the time of the Peace Conference to end the Thousand Yahren War. He was the only battlestar commander to keep his ship on battle-stations drill, and as a result, the Galactica was the only battlestar to survive the Cylon sneak attack. (Another battlestar, the Pegasus, was later discovered to have survived, and to have raided Cylon outposts for a year after the destruction of the colonies. However, it appeared in only two episodes before it mysteriously disappeared, its fate ambiguous.) Despite the destruction and great personal loss, Adama was able to organize the survivors in an escape from the Cylons and lead them on the search for Earth. In fact the word Adama means Earth in the Hebrew language.
Adama is a fair and beloved leader, with almost unquestioned authority. He is a deeply religious man, and his visit to the planet Kobol and the Fleet's encounter with the Ship of Lights strengthened his belief that someday Earth would be found.

Lorne Greene was born in Ottawa, Ontario, to Russian Jewish immigrants, Daniel, a shoemaker, and Dora Green (Grinovsky). He was called "Chaim" by his mother, and his name is shown as "Hyman" on his school report cards. In his biography, the author, his daughter Linda Greene Bennett, stated that it was not known when he began using "Lorne", nor when he added an "e" to Green.
Greene was the drama instructor at Camp Arowhon, a summer camp in Algonquin Park, Ontario, Canada, where he grew his talents.
Greene began acting while attending Queen's University in Kingston, where he also acquired a knack for broadcasting with the Radio Workshop of the university's Drama Guild on the campus radio station CFRC. He gave up on a career in chemical engineering and, upon graduation, found a job as a radio broadcaster for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC).
Greene was assigned as the principal newsreader on the CBC National News. The CBC gave him the nickname "The Voice of Canada"; however, his role in delivering distressing war news in sonorous tones following Canada's entry into World War II in 1939 caused many listeners to call him "The Voice of Doom". During his radio days, Greene invented a stopwatch that ran backwards. It helped radio announcers gauge how much time was left, while speaking. He also narrated documentary films, such as the National Film Board of Canada's Fighting Norway (1943). In 1957 Greene played the prosecutor in Peyton Place.
Actress and theater producer Katharine Cornell cast him twice in her Broadway productions. In 1953, he was cast in The Prescott Proposals. In that same year, she cast him in a verse drama by Christopher Fry, The Dark is Light Enough.
Greene began appearing in isolated episodes on live television in the 1950s. In 1953, he was seen in the title role of a one-hour adaptation of Shakespeare's Othello. In 1955 he was Ludwig van Beethoven in an episode of the TV version of You Are There.
The first of his continuing TV roles was as the patriarch Ben Cartwright in the western series Bonanza (1959-1973), making Greene a household name. He garnered the role after his performance as O'Brien in the CBS production of Nineteen Eighty-Four.
In 1973, after the cancellation of Bonanza following a 14-year run, Greene joined Ben Murphy in the ABC crime drama, Griff, about a Los Angeles, California, police officer, Wade "Griff" Griffin, who retires to become a private detective. When Griff failed to gain sufficient ratings and was cancelled after thirteen episodes, Greene thereafter hosted the syndicated nature documentary series Last of the Wild from 1974 to 1975. In the 1977 miniseries Roots, he played the first master of Kunta Kinte, John Reynolds. Through the 1970s, Greene was the spokesman for Alpo Beef Chunks dog food commercials, one of the possible origins of the phrase "Eating your own dog food". In 2007, TV Guide listed Ben Cartwright as the nation's second most popular TV Father (behind Cliff Huxtable).
Greene was also known for his role as Commander Adama, another patriarchal figure, in the science fiction feature film and television series Battlestar Galactica (1978-1979) and Galactica 1980 (1980). Greene's typecasting as a wise father character continued with the 1981 series, Code Red as a Fire Department Fire Chief whose command includes his children as subordinates. Greene also made an appearance with Michael Landon on an episode of Highway to Heaven.
In the 1960s, Greene capitalized on his image as "Pa" Benjamin Cartwright by recording several albums of country-western/folk songs, which Greene performed in a mixture of spoken word and singing. In 1964, Greene had a #1 single on the music charts with his spoken-word ballad, "Ringo" (which referred to the real-life Old West outlaw Johnny Ringo, not about Ringo Starr of the Beatles), and got a lot of play time from, "Saga of the Ponderosa", which detailed the Cartwright founding of the famous ranch. In the 1980s Greene devoted his energies to wildlife and environmental issues.[citation needed] He was the host and narrator of the nature series, Lorne Greene's New Wilderness, a show which promoted environmental awareness.[citation needed] He also appeared in the HBO mockumentary The Canadian Conspiracy, about the supposed subversion of the United States by Canadian-born media personalities. For nearly a decade, Greene co-hosted the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade on NBC. He is also fondly remembered as the founder of Toronto's Academy of Radio Arts (originally called the Lorne Greene School of Broadcasting).
Greene was married twice, first to Rita Hands of Toronto (1938-1960, divorced). Some reports list the start of their marriage as 1940. They had two children, twins born in 1945, Belinda Susan Bennet (nee Greene) and Charles Greene.
His second wife was Nancy Deale (1961-1987, Greene's death), with whom he had one child, Gillian Dania Greene, born January 6, 1968 in Los Angeles, California.
Greene died in 1987 of complications from pneumonia in Santa Monica, California. He was interred at Hillside Memorial Park Cemetery in Culver City.