WASHINGTON — Barbra Streisand, Steven Spielberg, Stephen Sondheim, James Taylor, Itzhak Perlman, and Gloria and Emilio Estefan are among the 17 individuals to receive the 2015 Medal of Freedom, the country’s highest civilian honor. The honors will be presented in a ceremony Nov. 24 at the White House.
President Barack Obama will also salute the achievements of Baseball Hall of Fame member Willie Mays, NASA mathematician Katherine G. Johnson and Bonnie Carroll, a member of the Defense Health Board who has been an advocate for veterans.
Among the public servants honored are Sen. Barbara Mikulski, former Congressman and foreign affairs expert Lee Hamilton and former Environmental Protection Agency Administrator William Ruckelshaus. Yogi Berra, Shirley Chisholm, the first African-American woman elected to Congress, Indian rights advocate Billy Frank Jr., and human rights leader Minoru Yasui will be honored posthumously.
In a statement, Obama said he looks forward to presenting the honor to these distinguished Americans.
Established in 1963 by President John F. Kennedy, the medals have been awarded to more than 500 artists, scientists, public servants and activists.
2 from Washington
Frank and Ruckelshaus are from Washington state.
Frank was an Indian treaty rights and environmental stewardship advocate, whose activism paved the way for the “Boldt decision,” which reaffirmed tribal co-management of salmon resources in the state. Frank led effective “fish-ins,” akin to sit-ins of the civil rights movement, during the tribal “fish wars” of the 1960s and 1970s.
Frank, who died in 2014, received many awards, including the Martin Luther King Jr. Distinguished Service Award for Humanitarian Achievement.
Ruckelshaus was first and fifth administrator of the EPA, under Presidents Nixon and Reagan. He shaped the guiding principles of the agency and brought the public into the decision-making process. Among the EPA’s achievements under his leadership was a nationwide ban on the pesticide DDT and an agreement with the automobile industry to require catalytic converters, which significantly reduced automobile pollution.
