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Presidential Medal of Freedom Recipient Julia Child
The President's Honor Roll; Clinton Awards Medal to 15 American Standouts
8/10/2000
The Washington Post , August 10, 2000, Thursday, Final Edition
SECTION: STYLE; Pg. C01
LENGTH: 1545 words
HEADLINE: The President's Honor Roll; Clinton Awards Medal to 15 American Standouts
BYLINE: Jacqueline L. Salmon, Washington Post Staff Writer
BODY:
John Kenneth Galbraith. Jesse Jackson. George McGovern. Daniel Patrick Moynihan. Marian Wright Edelman.
Each is an icon, reflecting some aspect of our collective life as a nation--benchmarks of history whose names we instantly recognize.
But sometimes we need an event to remind us why we know them--and why we should care.
And so it was yesterday that economist Galbraith, civil rights activist Jackson, former presidential candidate McGovern, retiring Sen. Moynihan and children's advocate Edelman, as well as other prominent figures in American life, gathered in the East Room of the White House to be presented with the nation's highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Labor leaders, military leaders, ministers, activists--recipients who reflected the interests and politics of the departing president and the first lady, who happens to be running for the New York Senate seat vacated by Moynihan.
"Day in and day out," Hillary Clinton told the honorees and about 200 people in the audience, the 15 recipients "have widened our horizons and opened our minds and our hearts."
In his remarks, the president emphasized the first lady's role in choosing the honorees:
"Some of them reflect, now that we've been here eight years and been involved in public life for nearly three decades, a lot of personal experiences that we have had, and we had a lot of good times talking about who should be here today."
On the dais, facing a room packed with friends and families, sat 13 of the 15 recipients--some elderly, some frail, some sitting erect and vigorous.
One by one, in alphabetical order, they rose to accept the glistening white-and-gold medal, dipping their heads so that President Clinton could clasp it behind their necks and give them either a handshake or a Clintonesque hug.
Even the towering Galbraith, now stooped and frail, rose from his seat, steadied by a Marine, while Clinton put the medal with its bright blue ribbon on him. And after taking his seat, as Clinton announced the next recipient, the Rev. George Higgins of Catholic University, Galbraith quietly lifted the medal off his chest and gazed at it, turning it over, then letting it gently fall back to his chest.
Recipient Mildred "Millie" Jeffrey, a peppery women's labor and Democratic Party activist, broke the solemnity of the occasion by giving a mock curtsy and waving cheerfully at her family and friends after receiving the medal. The president laughed as uproariously as the crowd.
After the one-hour ceremony, as everyone crowded toward a reception, Peace Corps founder Sargent Shriver--a guest of McGovern and his running mate in his 1972 presidential campaign, as well as a '94 Medal of Freedom recipient--pulled a photocopied letter out of his pocket and stabbed his finger at the date: Aug. 9, 1974.
Addressed to Henry Kissinger, it was a copy of former president Nixon's resignation letter.
"Here it is," roared Shriver, who sported a blue McGovern-Shriver campaign button on his left lapel, "25 years later! We've made a lot of progress since Richard Nixon. . . . We didn't win, but, by God, what we stood for was really auspicious."
Outside on the White House portico, Moynihan regaled listeners with tales of President John F. Kennedy's efforts to turn a languishing honor called the Medal of Freedom into the more potent Presidential Medal of Freedom.
President Harry Truman created the Medal of Freedom in the waning days of World War II for those who aided American interests abroad. But, historians say, the medal quickly lost its cachet when it was doled out to more than 20,000 people, according to "The Presidential Medal of Freedom , " a 1996 book by Virginia author Bruce Wetterau.
In 1963, Kennedy renamed and reinvigorated the award, with the help of a young aide. Yesterday, nearly four decades later, that aide stood on the dais of the East Room to accept his own medal--Moynihan.
Kennedy broadened the medal's scope to its present standard: for "especially meritorious contributions to the security or national interest of the United States, World Peace or cultural or other significant public or private endeavors"--and announced the first 31 recipients on July 4, 1963.
But Kennedy never got the chance to present the medals. According to Wetterau, the ceremony was repeatedly postponed because of design disagreements between the president and the first lady. It was finally scheduled for Dec. 6, 1963, but Kennedy was assassinated on Nov. 22.
And so, a mere 14 days after Kennedy's death, it fell to newly inaugurated President Lyndon Johnson to bestow the awards on such American icons as African American singer Marian Anderson and labor leader George Meany--as well as a posthumous medal to the fallen president himself. Johnson also had a medal engraved for Jacqueline Kennedy, but she declined hers, according to Wetterau.
Yesterday Moynihan recalled that emotional ceremony, also held in the East Room. Johnson had been reluctant to present only one posthumous award, he said, so Moynihan had been pressed into calling the Vatican to see if an award could also be given to Pope John, who had died nine months earlier.
"And the bishop said, 'Well, I'm sure he wouldn't mind but if he did mind, how would we know?' " Moynihan related.
He recalled how Jacqueline Kennedy sat behind a screen in the East Room during the ceremony so she couldn't be seen and listened to the citation, written by Moynihan, for her dead husband. "And then she got up," recalled Moynihan, "and she left the White House forever."
Recent decades have brought a proliferation of other presidential medals for civilians: the Presidential Citizens Medal, the National Medal of Arts.
The newest presidential medal--the Presidential Medal of Valor for public safety officers, such as firefighters and police officers--was established by Clinton just last month.
But the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal, awarded to civilians by Congress, continue to hold their position as the neplus ultra of civilian honors.
Unlike most Washington institutions, the Presidential Medal of Freedom has been touched by controversy only briefly. In the 1960s, entertainment mogul Walt Disney was said to have worn a Goldwater pin on his lapel when he was awarded his medal. The story was later debunked. And in 1977, the family of the late sculptor Alexander Calder boycotted the ceremony to make a statement favoring amnesty for Vietnam draft resisters.
What surely is one of the most ironic moments in the medal's history took place in 1970, when Nixon presented the medal to eight journalists--including Washington Post White House correspondent Edward T. Folliard.
Because the honorees are chosen solely by the president, their choices have tended to reflect personal and political preferences, say presidential historians.
Ronald Reagan, who awarded 85 medals--the most of any president (Clinton is number two with 83)--during his two terms, honored Hollywood contemporaries James Cagney, Frank Sinatra and Jimmy Stewart, as well as the Rev. Billy Graham and conservative Barry Goldwater.
George Bush awarded the medal to Reagan, British leader Margaret Thatcher and, in 1991, Desert Storm commanders Norman Schwarzkopf and Colin Powell.
Two years later, Powell made another trip to the White House to be awarded another Medal of Freedom, by Clinton, when he retired from the Army, becoming one of only two people ever to have received the medal twice. Ambassador Ellsworth Bunker was honored in '63 and '67.
Only a few people have won both the Congressional Gold Medal and the Medal of Freedom . Nazi war criminal prosecutor Simon Wiesenthal joined those ranks yesterday, although he was ill and unable to attend the ceremony, the White House said. Wiesenthal earned the Congressional Gold Medal in 1980.
Below, a list of yesterday's other recipients. While all of the names aren't instantly recognizable to many Americans, their accomplishments will be:
* James Edward Burke, the former chairman of Johnson & Johnson who won praise for his handling of the Tylenol-poisoning scare in the 1980s. He is chairman of the Partnership for a Drug-Free America.
* The late Sen. John H. Chafee, Republican senator from Rhode Island and one of Congress's leading environmentalists, who died last October. His widow, Virginia, accepted the award.
* Gen. Wesley K. Clark, the iconoclastic commander who headed U.N. forces in the Kosovo conflict.
* Adm. William Crowe, commander of the Middle East Force in the Persian Gulf and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
* Mathilde Krim, founder of the AIDS Medical Foundation and leading AIDS activist who has raised millions of dollars for the cause.
* Cruz Reynoso, the first Latino California Supreme Court justice and currently vice chairman of the Commission on Civil Rights.
* The Rev. Gardner C. Taylor, Baptist minister, author and early civil rights activist.
After the ceremony, someone asked Moynihan how it felt to receive an honor that he had worked to create, and his face softened.
"It's so special," he said, so quietly he could barely be heard, his eyes far away. "It's a special moment."
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Medal History
