President
Barack Obama presents a Medal of Freedom to author and poet Maya
Angelou during a ceremony in the East Room of the White House in
Washington, Tuesday, Feb. 15, 2011. [AP
Photo]
Yesterday, President Obama
awarded
the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor,
to Maya Angelou and 14 other recipients including cellist Yo-Yo Ma,
civil rights activist Sylvia Mendez, and former president George H.W.
Bush.
"This is one of the things I most look forward to every
year," Obama said, calling the honorees "the best of who we are and who
we aspire to be."
...[Obama] praised Angelou for rising above an abusive childhood to
inspire others with her words, saying her voice has "spoken to millions,
including my mother, which is why my sister is named Maya."
He quoted Angelou, saying, "History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot
be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again," and
bent down to kiss her cheek as he presented her with the medal.
The
other inductees were Holocaust survivor, author, and activist Gerda
Weissmann Klein, co-founder of the National Resources Defense Council
John H. Adams, former ambassador to Ireland and founder of VSA Jean
Kennedy Smith, former president of the AFL-CIO John J. Sweeney, artist
Jasper Johns, investor Warren Buffett, basketballer Bill Russell,
baseballer Stan Musial, and and Dr. Tom Little, "an optometrist who was
killed while on a humanitarian mission to Afghanistan, whose award was
accepted by his wife."
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