Via: rollingout.com
WASHINGTON – Before President Obama awarded the Presidential Medals of Freedom, he noted how the towering Bill Russell, introduced this special day as “William F. Russell,” took great pains to represent the Boston Celtics in exemplary fashion, despite the gaping emotional wounds he suffered at the hands of savage racists, and pushed forward to become the first African American coach in the NBA.
Obama talked about how Maya Angelou rose like a phoenix from the ashes of her abusive childhood to emerge as a poet and writer of such spectacular depth that it almost defies description. He also told the capacity crowd of how Georgia Congressman John Lewis returned to the front lines of the Civil Rights Movement so soon after being beaten so mercilessly that some thought he would not survive — only to go out and be pummeled again and again.
“It means a lot to me to be given this award by the first African American president of the United States,” Lewis said afterward in the James Brady Press Briefing Room, adjacent to the White House.
In all, Obama told the story of how the 15 recipients of the coveted medals overcame tremendous odds and tragedies to emerge triumphant this day in the East Wing of the White House. Before a media contingent that was more than four times the size of a normal White House event, Obama presented each one with their medals for extraordinary and meritorious service. Among those in attendance was football legend Jim Brown, NBA Commissioner David Stern and Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed.
“They represent the best of us and what we aspire to be,” Obama said.
The 2010 Medal of Freedom recipients were announced in November. Other winners include:
– Angela Merkel, German chancellor
– John H. Adams, co-founder of Natural Resources Defense Council
– George H.W. Bush, former president
– Jasper Johns, artist
– Gerda Weissmann Klein, Holocaust survivor and author
– Dr. Tom Little (posthumous), optometrist murdered on a humanitarian mission in Afghanistan
– Sylvia Mendez, civil rights activist of Mexican and Puerto Rican descent
– Stan Musial, Hall of Fame baseball player
– Jean Kennedy Smith, founder of VSA, a nonprofit organization that promotes the artistic talents of people with disabilities
– John J. Sweeney, president emeritus of the AFL-CIO
– Warren Buffett, philanthropist and businessman
– Yo-Yo Ma, Grammy-winning cellist
