North Carolina awards

              The North Carolina Awards
1987

THE AWARD

The North Carolina Awards were instituted by the 1961 Genearl Assembly, which acted on the idea of the late Dr. Robert Lee Humber of Greenville, then State Senator from Pitt County. The purpose of the Awards, as set forth in the statutes, is to recognize "notable accomplishments by North Carolina citizens in the fields of scholarships, research, the fine arts and public leadership." It is the highest honor the state can bestow.

The North Carolina Award was designed by the eminent sculptor PAul Manship and was one of his last commissions before his death.

MESSAGE FROM THE GOVERNOR

The North Carolina Awards are the highest honor our State can bestow. Created in 1961 by the General Assembly, the award is given yearly to men and women who have made significant contributions in science, literature, fine arts, and public service. 

On behalf of all North Carolinians I congratulate the 1987 award recipients for their outstanding achievements. The citizens ofour State can be proud to have in their midst such distinguished individuals. North Carolina is a better place because they have given of their time, talent, and intelligence. 
-Jim Martin


PROGRAM

27th North Carolinan Awards

Dinner and Awards Presentation
The Raleigh Marriott
November 6, 1987


Welcome
The Honorable Patric G. Dorsey, Secretary
North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources

Presentation of Colors
North Carolina National Guard
Raleigh, NC

Pledge of Allegiance
Commander P. C. Dorsey
United States Navy, Retired
New Bern, North Carolina

Invocation
Dr. H. Edwin Pickard
White Memorial Presbyterian Church
Raleigh, North Carolina

Remarks
The Honorable James E. Holshouser, Jr., Chairman
North Carolina Awards Committee

Presentation
The Honorable James G. Martin, Governor
State of North Carolina


Video Documentation Program
Department of Cultural Resources

Mrs. Carolyn Newton, Pianist
Dunn, North Carolina

Wines provided by Orville T. Magoon, Winegrower of Guenoc Winery in Lake County, California, with the assistance of East Carolina Distributing Company, Raleigh and New Bern

THE NORTH CAROLINA AWARDS COMMITTEE
James E. Holshouser, Jr., Chairman
Dr. David Sabiston, Jr.
Anne Peden
Dr. Anthony Abbott
John Ehle

Public Service
John T. Caldwell

John T. Caldwell receives the 1987 North Carolina Award in Public Service for his dedicated and farsighted leadership in higher education. For over fifteen years he served as Chancellor of North Carolina State University, overseeing a period of tremendous growth and change at that school. During his tenure, North Carolina State entered the first rank of our nation's colleges and universities.

Born in Yazoo City, Mississippi, John Caldwell studied at Mississippi State College, and received Master's degrees from both Duke University and Columbia University. A Julius Rosenwald Fellow at Princeton University, he was awarded a doctorate in political science in 1939. During his years of graduate work, he served as an instructor at Holmes Junior College in Mississippi and as an assistant economist with the United States Department of Agriculture. He joined the faculty of Vanderbilt University in 1939 as an instructor in political science, rising to become assistant professor in 1942.

After distinguished service as a Lieutenant Commander in the Navy during the Second World War, Caldwell served as President of Alabama College in Montevallo, Alabama. In 1952 he was selected to be president of the University of Arkansas, continuing in that position until 1959.

Chosen to replace Chancellor Carey Bostian at North Carolina State College in 1959, Caldwell quickly established a reputation for his commitment to excellence in education. Under his leadership North Carolina State entered a watershed period of its history. In 1965 it became a university. New and innovative programs were added to the curriculum. Student enrollment nearly tripled; the number of students in graduate programs, alone, rose from 200 to 4,000. Over a score of major new buildings were completed during his term as chancellor. Upon his retirement in 1975, almost two thirds of the 47,000 degrees awarded in the school's history had been conferred during his tenure.

Dr. Caldwell has participated in a wide range of professional activities. He has served as president of the National Association of Land Grant Colleges and State Universities, and on the Board of Trustees of Princeton University, the National Humanities Center, and the Triangle Universities Center for Advanced Studies.

Among his honors and awards are honorary degrees from Wake Forest University, Duke University, the University of Maryland, and the College of the Ozarks. Upon his retirement, the North Carolina State University faculty voted him an honorary doctor of laws degree in recognition of his years of exemplary service to the cause of higher education in North Carolina.

Dr. Caldwell is married to the former Carol Schroeder Erskine. They have six children and reside in Raleigh.

Public Service
Charles Kurault

Charles Kuralt receives a special 1987 North Carolina Award in Public Service for a native North Carolinian living outside the state. For thirty years he has demonstrated a constant dedication to excellence in news and special feature broadcasting. His popular television reports, "On the Road With Charles Kuralt," and his weekly program, "CBS News Sunday Morning," have gained him a national reputation and the admiration of millions of viewers.

Born in Wilmington, Kuralt spent much of his childhood at his grandparents' tobacco farm, for him a very happy time. In spare moments he read the works of Charles Dickens and 0. Henry, and The National Geographic Magazine.

At the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, where he received a B.A. degree in history, he edited the campus newspaper, The Daily Tar Heel. In 1955, after graduating, Kuralt joined the staff of The Charlotte News as a reporter. His endearing human interest stories for that newspaper earned him the 1956 Ernie Pyle Memorial Award.

Recruited by CBS in 1957, Kuralt began his long association with that network as a television news writer. In 1959 he became a television news correspondent. During the mid - 1960's, with considerable time spent reporting from overseas, Kuralt prepared pieces for the documentary series, "CBS Reports," and a number of public affairs specials.

Beginning in October 1967 Kuralt began a series of what have become the best loved human interest segments on television. "On the Road with Charles Kuralt," starting with a three-man technical crew, set out to cover the nation, exploring, Kuralt explained, "the jigsaw puzzle that this country is."

The success of "On the Road with Charles Kuralt" was phenomenal. Recipient of three George Foster Peabody Awards for broadcasting and three Emmy Awards, Kuralt collected some of the best of these segments in essay form for his book, Dateline America, published in 1979. During the 1970's and early 1980's Kuralt served as co-anchor of the CBS afternoon feature, "Magazine," and as anchor of the CBS morning news program. But it was with "CBS News Sunday Morning," a new, ninety-minute news magazine debuting in 1979, that he found a second home. Kuralt saw the show as a natural extension of "On the Road." An immediate critical success, it has won several broadcasting awards, including a Peabody Award and the Odyssey Institute's Third Annual Media Award.

Charles Kuralt's contributions to his native state are numerous. A travel film he did for North Carolina has been seen by more than fifty million people. His album, "North Carolina Is My Home," created together with composer Loonis McGlohon, is his special contribution to the celebration of America's four hundredth anniversary.

Married to the former Suzanna Folsom Baird, Kuralt, his wife, and two daughters reside in New York City.

Literature
Maya Angelou

Maya Angelou receives the 1987 North Carolina Award in Literature for her many notable contributions to America's Black literary tradition in poetry, autobiography, and theatre. An accomplished artist in numerous art forms, her works combine a thorough knowledge of the Black experience with a finely-developed sense of expression.

Born Marguerite Johnson in St. Louis, Missouri, as a child Miss Angelou was sent with her brother to live in Arkansas. Nicknamed "Maya" - "Mine" - by her brother, at an early age she exhibited a passion for literature and the arts. As she describes it: "there was a woman in my town, Mrs. Flowers, who would read to me in a mellifluous voice. She loved poetry ... She read Dickens to me and I lived in London. She read me the Bronte sisters and I walked with them on the moors. By the time I was eleven, I had lived all those different lives."

Moving to San Francisco in 1940, Miss Angelou completed high school there when she was fifteen. With a newborn son to support, she held a variety of jobs, studying dance and drama at night. A chance to study dance in New York in 1952 significantly changed her life. As a dancer and singer she performed in various California nightclubs during the 1950s. She performed in the United States State Department - sponsored production of "Porgy and Bess," which toured Europe and Africa in 1954 and 1955.

Her interest and talent in poetry brought Miss Angelou to New York City in 1959, where she worked with the Harlem Writers Guild. It was also during this time when she became politically active, involving herself in the struggles for civil rights. After marrying a South African, she worked and taught in Egypt and Ghana, serving as editor, first, of The Arab Observer, in Cairo, and, then, as feature editor of The African Review in Ghana.

On her return to the United States in 1966, Miss Angelou wrote and produced a ten-part PBS series on African traditions in American life. In 1970 she published I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, the best-selling first volume of what turned out to be her ongoing autobiography. Four more volumes have followed since then: Gather Together In My Name (1974), Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas (1976), The Heart of A Woman (1981), and All God's Children Need Travelling Shoes (1986). Her collections of poetry published during the same period include: Oh Pray My Wings Are Gonna Fit Me Well (1975), And Still I Rise (1978), and Shaker Why Don't You Sing? (1983).

In 1972 she wrote the original screenplay and musical score for the film Georgia, Georgia, the first original screenplay by a black woman ever to be produced. She also wrote television screenplays for I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1977) and Sister, Sister (1979). Continuing her involvement in the theatre, she was nominated for a Tony Award for her performance in Look Away (1973).

A member of the Board of Trustees of the American Film Institute and of the Directors Guild, Miss Angelou has also served on the Commission of the International_ Women's Year. She has received numerous honors and awards, including a Chubb Fellowship from Yale University.

An indefatigable lecturer, Miss Angelou holds a lifetime appointment as Reynolds Professor of American Studies at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem.

Science
Robert J. Lefkowitz

Robert J. Lefkowitz receives the 1987 North Carolina Award in Science for his pioneering work in biochemistry. Through his internationallyrecognized research modern science is learning how drugs and hormones initiate cell activity in the body by way of cell-surface molecules or receptors. Due to his efforts it is possible to observe the biological chain of events that leads to all drug and hormone action.

Born in New York City, Lefkowitz attended schools there, graduating from Columbia University in 1962. He received his M.D. degree from the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons in 1966. After completing an internship and one year of general medical residency at Columbia, he served as a Clinical and Research Associate at the National Institute of Health. From 1970 until 1973 he finished his medical residency at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, where he completed research and clinical training in study of cardiovascular disease. During this time he was also a teaching fellow in the Howard University Medical School.

In 1973 Dr. Lefkowitz was appointed Associate Professor of Medicine and Assistant Professor of Biochemistry in the Duke University Medical Center. Promoted to Professor of Medicine in 1977, he was named James B. Duke Professor of Medicine at Duke in 1982. He has also served, since 1976, as an Investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

The author of nearly four hundred articles, Dr. Lefkowitz has edited and co-authored several books, including the seventh edition of the standard reference, Principles of Biochemistry. He has served on the editorial boards of leading scientific journals, including Life Sciences and the Journal of Biological Chemistry. Currently, he serves as the president of the American Society for Clinical Investigation.

For his outstanding work in the sciences Dr. Lefkowitz has been the recipient of numerous awards and honors, including the John J. Abel Award in Pharmacology, the Ernst Oppenheimer Memorial Award of the Endocrine Society, the Award for Outstanding Research of the International Society for Heart Research, and the Steven Beering Award for Outstanding Achievement in Biomedical Science from Indiana University. In 1983 he was awarded the prestigious Lita Annenberg Hazen Award for Excellence in Clinical Research.

Commenting in The New York Times on Dr. Lefkowitz'reception of the Hazen Award, Alfred Stern, of the Mount Sinai Medical Center, declared: "major changes in the ways drugs are designed and tested have grown out of Dr. Lefkowitz' work. His discovery has suggested why the effectiveness of many drugs tends to wane after repeated doses ... researchers may at last have a tool to circumvent a serious pharmaceutical problem. Dr. Lefkowitz' work has ... been used and extended in numerous other areas of medicine, ranging from diabetes to hypertension."

Dr. Lefkowitz is married to the former Arna Susan. They have five children and reside in Durham.

Fine Arts
Harvey K. Littleton

Harvey K. Littleton receives the 1987 North Carolina Award in Fine Arts for his internationally renowned artistry in the medium of studio glass. In a very real sense, he is the founding father of the studio glass movement. By combining art and science he has created a remarkable collection of glass art and opened the way for others to follow. As a teacher and instructor his inspiration has been felt worldwide.

Born in Corning, New York, Littleton grew up in a family closely tied to the glass industry. His father was director of research for Corning Glass Works. As a boy he would accompany his father to the laboratory on Saturdays, where he was fascinated by the colorful glass objects he beheld.

Throughout his high school years at the Corning Free Academy, Littleton continued his interest in glass. After taking extension courses in art at Elmira College, he enrolled in the University of Michigan to pursue Industrial Design. His growing artistic ambitions persuaded him to leave the University for Cranbrook Academy, where he earned a Master of Fine Arts degree in 1949.

Since glass could only be made in an industrial context where the necessary large-scale equipment could be provided, Littleton first turned to ceramics to express his artistry. In 1949 he accepted a teaching position at the Museum School of the Toledo Museum of Art. There he built much of the equipment for the ceramics department.

Throughout the 1950s Littleton remained intrigued by the possibility of studio glass, glass blown and shaped in an artist's studio rather than in an industrial environment. His visits to the studio of Jean Sala, in France, and to several glass factories in Italy convinced him that glass as a legitimate art form could exist outside the context of industry. In 1960-1961 Littleton built his first glass studio at his home in Verona, Wisconsin. In 1951 he joined the faculty of the University of Wisconsin. From 1964 until 1967 and, again, from 1969 until 1971, he was chairman of the university's Department of Art and Art Education. It was at Wisconsin, starting with a handful of students, that Littleton inaugurated the first course of studies in glass art. The techniques and methods he taught there, now accepted as standard, pioneered in the establishment of the modern glass art form as we know it.

Exhibitions of Littleton's art have been held at the Art Institute of Chicago, at the Corning Museum of Art, in Corning, New York, at the Heller Gallery, in New York, and in Germany, Belgium, Japan, Holland, and Austria. Among his countless honors and awards are an Honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts from the Philadelphia College of Art, a Gold Medal of the American Craft Council, and Honorary Life Membership in the Glass Art Society of the United States.

Littleton left Wisconsin in 1976 for the North Carolina mountains. His studio at the Penland School, near Spruce Pine, attracts international attention and he continues to share his wealth of knowledge with younger colleagues and talented students.

Littleton is married to the former Bess Tamura. In recent years he has had the satisfaction of seeing his son, who followed in his footsteps, also receive international acclaim in glass artistry.