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2003 Presidential Medal of Freedom Recipients
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2003 Presidential Medal of Freedom Recipients
President Honors 2003 Presidential Medal of Freedom Recipients
President Bush said Wednesday, "All who receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom have the continued respect of their peers and the lasting admiration of the American people."
The Presidential Medal of Freedom is America's highest civil award. It is conferred upon men and women of high achievement in the arts and entertainment, public service, science, education, athletics, business and other fields. For most recipients, this award is a special distinction added to many prior honors.
Some recipients are no longer with us, but are still highly regarded and fondly remembered. All who receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom have the continued respect of their peers and the lasting admiration of the American people.
For Immediate Release
Office of the Press Secretary
July 18, 2003
Statement by the Press Secretary
At a ceremony to be held at the White House on July 23, 2003, the President will award the Nation's highest civil honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom , to the following individuals:
Jacques Barzun is a former Columbia University professor and dean, and author and scholar of modern European thought and culture. His critically acclaimed books include Race, A Study in Modern Superstition; Marx, Darwin, Wagner: Critique of a Heritage; and the more recent From Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life: 1500 to the Present.
Julia Child is a master chef, television pioneer, and author who changed the way many Americans cook. From her cookbooks to her numerous television series, she has delighted and educated amateur and professional chefs around the world.
Roberto Walker Clemente's Hall of Fame baseball career took him from Puerto Rico to the Pittsburgh Pirates. His lifetime batting average was .371 with 240 home runs and 1,305 RBI's. He was also committed to helping the less fortunate. His career was cut tragically short by an accident as he was delivering emergency relief to earthquake victims in Nicaragua.
Van Cliburn , at the age of 23, won the first Tchaikovsky International Piano Competition held in 1958 in Moscow, just months after the Sputnik launch. Throughout his long career as a concert pianist, he has entertained audiences around the world with his talents and continues to inspire young artists to achieve excellence.
Vaclav Havel's acclaimed plays about the oppressive Communist rule of his native Czechoslovakia caused him to be imprisoned numerous times. He persevered as a strong voice for freedom of his homeland and a voice throughout the world for democracy. Havel became president of the new Czech Republic, leading the new democratic nation until earlier this year.
Charlton Heston is an Academy Award winning actor and an eloquent, early voice on behalf of civil rights in the United States and democracy around the world. His films include The Greatest Show on Earth, El Cid, The Greatest Story Ever Told, Ben Hur, The Ten Commandments, and Planet of the Apes, among many others.
Edward Teller left his native Hungary to escape the rise of Nazi Germany. After arriving in America, he established himself as a premier physicist. His work on national defense projects such as the Manhattan Project and the Strategic Defense Initiative helped protect our Nation and bring about the end of the Cold War.
R. David Thomas's hard work, business sense, and perseverance led him to create one of the world's largest restaurant chains. In memory of his grandmother's advice to "never cut corners," his restaurants, named after one of his daughters, became known for their square hamburger patties. A philanthropist, and having been adopted himself, Dave was a life-long advocate for adoption.
Byron Raymond White led an extraordinary American life. He was named an All-American athlete and Rhodes Scholar, earned a Bronze Star in World War II, played in the NFL and led the league in rushing, worked to defend civil rights as Deputy Attorney General, and served for 31 years as a Justice on the Supreme Court of the United States.
James Q. Wilson has written influential works on the nature of human morality, government, and criminal justice issues. A noted social commentator and professor at both Harvard and UCLA, his books include Varieties of Police Behavior: The Management of Law and Order in Eight Communities, The Moral Sense, and The Marriage Problem: How Our Culture Has Weakened Families.
John R. Wooden is a record-setting college basketball coach and exceptional teacher whose UCLA Bruins won 10 National Championships in 12 years. His teams reflected his discipline, character, and work ethic. His Pyramid of Success has inspired generations.
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Remarks by the President in Presentation of the Presidential Medal of Freedom
Text of the Citations for the 2003 Presidential Medals of Freedom
Medal of Freedom Honorees Reflect America's Diversity
President Bush Honors 11 at White House Ceremony
A physicist, an actor, a basketball coach, a political scientist, a musician, a freedom fighter turned president.
Six individuals, six distinct life paths came together at the White House July 23 -- along with representatives of five of their peers -- to be honored by President Bush with the Presidential Medal of Freedom .
Scientist Edward Teller, film and stage star Charlton Heston, university coach John Wooden, writer and thinker James Q. Wilson, internationally-acclaimed pianist Van Cliburn and former Czech Republic president Vaclav Havel took their places on a raised platform in the East Room. Also present were relatives of Jacques Barzun, the esteemed Columbia University historian, and Julia Child, the rangy, ebullient chef who brought the elegant possibilities of cuisine to millions through television. Joining them were the widows of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Byron R. White, famed baseball player Roberto Clemente and R. David Thomas, founder of the Wendy's fast-food restaurant chain, who received the tributes on behalf of their late husbands.
Taken together, the men and women being honored -- some household names, all mighty achievers in their particular life and career journeys -- reflect diversity in the choices they made across their years as well as, generally, the possibilities of humankind. Each found uncommon means of etching his and her personal experiences and accomplishments into the annals of 20th-century life, in America and across the world.
Dave Thomas , who died in January 2002, began life as an orphan and adopted child. Having created a mass-market cultural landmark in the food industry and rising to a corporate boardroom, he never lost sight of his roots. His foundation for adoption aims at increasing awareness of the needs of this field as well as supporting model adoption programs.
Byron White , known as "Whizzer" when he was a top-flight college football star, went on to a military and U.S. Government career -- including service at the Justice Department during the civil rights era. Then President Kennedy nominated him for appointment to the nation's highest court, where he served during three of the more tumultuous decades of the 20th century. His majority opinions, and his dissents as well, stand tall as paradigms of independent thinking. He died in April 2002.
Baseball star Roberto Clemente , a native of Puerto Rico, had, in the president's words, "a quick bat, a rifle arm and a gentle heart." It was his heart that tragically brought about his death at 38 in a plane crash on the last day of 1972, as he was taking medicine, food and clothing to earthquake-ravaged Nicaragua. The foundation created in his name sponsors athletic and educational programs for disadvantaged teenagers.
Julia Child , 91, represented at the ceremony by her niece, was a fixture on television and America's and the world's bookshelves, known to all as "the French chef." Her effervescence, and her refusal to take herself seriously, endeared her to young and old alike. Before she came along, the president observed, "no one imagined it could be so interesting to watch a meal being prepared." Her kitchen, as millions remember it, has been added to collection of the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History.
Jacques Barzun , 95, whose grandson was present to receive the medal, spent more than eight decades writing and teaching incisively on culture and history, reflecting on everything from art and science to music and detective fiction. "Few academics of the last century have equaled his output and his influence," Bush said of the honoree he called "a thinker of great discernment and integrity."
On the platform, Vaclav Havel -- the only non-American being saluted -- smiled broadly as the president referred to a life that "brought two experiences he never could have expected, that of a prisoner and that of a president." Bush hailed the playwright-turned-patriot, 66, for having "ridiculed the pretensions of an oppressive government," and whose most subversive act "was telling the truth about tyranny."
Another of the honorees on hand, Edward Teller , also knows quite a bit about combating tyranny. The Hungarian-born scientist's expertise was pivotal to the success of the Manhattan Project -- the top-secret operation in the early 1940s aimed at developing the atom bomb. Teller, now 95, spent much of the postwar era as a fervent advocate of a strong national defense, including, most prominently, what the president termed "the great scientific and moral task" of building a strategic missile defense system.
Charlton Heston's life is noteworthy, Bush observed, for "service in World War II, his leadership of a labor union, his activism on behalf of civil rights and his principled defense of the Bill of Rights." Most likely, though, it will be his mark on celluloid that will keep his name and image alive in the years to come. Portraying a wide range of larger-than-life figures in movies and in the theater -- from Moses and Michelangelo to John the Baptist and President Andrew Jackson -- the actor, 78, limned both a physical strength and a strength of purpose in every role he assumed.
The scholarship produced by James Q. Wilson , 72, economist and political analyst, has encompassed a range of fields and social sectors, from criminology to delinquency to government regulation of corporate America. His dozen books and scores of essays have been essential reading for professionals across the spectrum of U.S. society. Praising Wilson's intellectual rigor and moral clarity, the president suggested that he "may be the most influential political scientist in America since the White House was home to Professor Woodrow Wilson," in the 1910s.
At a time of intense competition and confrontation between East and West -- 1958, the height of the Cold War -- Van Cliburn became an American national hero, soaring into public adulation at 23 by winning the prestigious International Tschaikovsky Piano Competition in Moscow. Saluted chiefly for his technique and virtuosity, he became a much-sought-after concert soloist and recording artist in the years that followed, refining what Bush called "the gifts of a prodigy with the discipline and consistency of a true master." In 1962, he established a quadrennial piano competition in his own name, in Texas.
Discipline invariably was the watchword and philosophy that guided the lofty achievements of John Wooden , basketball coach at the University of California at Los Angeles for decades. An athletic mentor might seem to be an unusual choice as a Medal of Freedom recipient, yet in his work -- and mirrored in his players and their accomplishments, at UCLA and thereafter -- one can see a reflection of American, and indeed, basic human values.
"He was the man who taught generations of basketball players the fundamentals of hard work and discipline, patience and teamwork," the president remarked of Wooden, 92. Those fundamentals were incorporated into his famed pyramid of success, a graphic description of how industriousness, friendship, loyalty, cooperation and enthusiasm at the base builds ultimately to competitive greatness.
Hard work and discipline, patience and teamwork -- applicable to science, acting, the business sector, education, culture, jurisprudence, politics, and -- yes, even the kitchen.
In other words, taken as a whole, the achievements of 10 of the 2003 Medal of Freedom recipients exemplify the philosophy, character and approach to work and life of the eleventh.
By Michael J. Bandler
Washington File Staff Writer
(The Washington File is a product of the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
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Medal History
