44 F
New York
Friday, March 29, 2024

Prominent Jews Among 2015 Presidential Medal of Freedom Recipients

Related Articles

-Advertisement-

Must read

“Medal of Freedom Awarded to ‘a Class Act’ Group of 17” [Photo Credit: The New York Times, November 24, 2015].
President Barack Obama presents the Presidential Medal of Freedom to singer Barbra Streisand during an East Room ceremony on November 24, 2015 at the White House.

Last Tuesday, November 24th, 2015, President Barak Obama “awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom to an eclectic mix of Americans from the sciences, arts, sports, politics and human rights, some of them household names and others who he indicated should be,” reported The New York Times.

Among those honored were recognizable personas, such as as Willie Mays, Barbara Streisand, Itzhak Perlman, James Taylor, Gloria and Emilio Estefan, Stephen Sondheim, and Steven Spielberg. Other figures included, the widow of a general who helped other survivors, and a space scientist.

The Presidential Medal of Freedom is an award bestowed by the President of the United States and is—along with the comparable Congressional Gold Medal, bestowed by an act of U.S. Congress—the highest civilian award of the United States.

The President handed the honorary medal to “Bonnie Carroll, who founded the Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors, or TAPS, after her husband, Brig. Gen. Tom Carroll, died in a military plane crash in 1992. Mr. Obama extolled Katherine G. Johnson, a NASA mathematician who opened the door for women and African-Americans as she calculated historic spaceflights of the astronauts Alan Shepard and John Glenn.”

According to the New York Times, in the 17 recipients of the honorary medal, President Obama included a few fellow politicians, including “Senator Barbara A. Mikulski, Democrat of Maryland, the longest-serving woman in Congress, and former Representative Lee H. Hamilton, Democrat of Indiana, who helped lead panels on the Iraq war and the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.”

 

Mr. Obama also awarded some other American heroes posthumously: Yogi Berra, the legendary baseball player and coach, and Shirley Chisholm, the first African-American woman elected to Congress. Similarly, he honored Billy Frank Jr., “a lifelong advocate of Indian treaty rights who led so-called fish-ins to preserve salmon resources in Washington State, and Minoru Yasui, who fought a World War II military curfew for Japanese-Americans all the way to the Supreme Court.”

Dina Hoffmann

balance of natureDonate

Latest article

- Advertisement -