2008 honorees are global voices whose achievements resonate in the arts,
science and political arena.
WILMINGTON, Del., March 4 /PRNewswire/ -- Four internationally renowned
leaders and achievers will be honored for their lifetime accomplishments
with the 29th annual Common Wealth Awards of Distinguished Service. These
prestigious awards recognize individuals who have advanced and enriched
society through their life's work.
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The 2008 Common Wealth Award winners are:
-- Glenn Close, celebrated actress of stage, screen and television, for
Dramatic Arts;
-- John Howard, four-term prime minister of Australia, for Government;
-- Ann Curry, news anchor of NBC's Today, co-anchor of Dateline NBC, for
Mass Communications;
-- James Hansen, preeminent climate scientist, director of the NASA
Goddard Institute for Space Studies, for Science.
The honorees will receive a shared prize of $200,000 at the Common
Wealth Awards ceremony, hosted by PNC Bank, Delaware, April 5 at the Hotel
du Pont in Wilmington.
The Common Wealth Awards of Distinguished Service were first presented
in 1979 by the Common Wealth Trust, created under the will of the late
Ralph Hayes, an influential business executive and philanthropist.
In their 29-year history, the Common Wealth Awards have conferred $4.4
million in prize money to 165 honorees of international renown. The awards
are funded by the Common Wealth Trust.
Ralph Hayes served on the board of directors of PNC Bank, Delaware's
predecessor banks from 1935 to 1965. Through the Common Wealth Awards, he
sought to recognize outstanding achievement in eight disciplines: dramatic
arts, literature, science, invention, mass communications, public service,
government, and sociology. The awards also provide an incentive for people
to make future contributions to the world community.
PNC Bank, Delaware has been trustee and administrator for the Common
Wealth Awards since their inception. PNC Bank, Delaware is a member of The
PNC Financial Services Group, Inc. (NYSE: PNC).
"The 2008 Common Wealth Award winners are among the most accomplished
and admired men and women of our time," said Connie Bond Stuart, president
of PNC Bank, Delaware. "Through their work and their achievements, these
individuals have influenced the way we think, live and feel. In the spirit
of the Common Wealth Awards, we honor these remarkable achievers for the
legacy they have contributed and the possibilities yet to be realized."
The roster of past honorees reveals the caliber of talent and the
global scope of the awardees and their achievements. Among the past winners
are 11 Nobel laureates, including human rights leader Archbishop Desmond
Tutu, former statesman Henry Kissinger and authors Gabriel Garcia Marquez
and Toni Morrison. Other winners include former Secretary of State Colin
Powell; children's television icon, the late Fred Rogers; Queen Noor of
Jordan; stage and screen stars Sidney Poitier and Meryl Streep; astronaut
John Glenn; primatologist Jane Goodall; ocean explorer Robert Ballard;
television journalists Walter Cronkite and Cokie Roberts; and World Wide
Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee.
(Biographies for each honoree are included with this release.)
Glenn Close
Glenn Close, the versatile and critically acclaimed star of the big
screen, television and Broadway, wins the 2008 Common Wealth Award for
Dramatic Arts.
The Emmy, Golden Globe and Tony Award-winning actress headlined her
first television series as high-stakes litigator Patty Hewes in the
original legal thriller Damages for FX, which premiered in July 2007 and
will return for two more seasons. For her role, Ms. Close was just honored
with the Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Television Series Drama as well
as a Screen Actors Guild Award nomination. Her return to FX followed her
rave reviews and Emmy nomination for her portrayal of Captain Monica
Rawling in a season-long story arc on the network's Emmy-winning series The
Shield.
Glenn Close made her feature film debut in The World According to Garp,
earning awards from the Los Angeles Film Critics Association and the
National Board of Review as well as an Academy Award nomination. She was
subsequently Oscar-nominated for her performances in The Big Chill, The
Natural, the smash hit Fatal Attraction, and Dangerous Liaisons.
Close's other films include Jagged Edge, Reversal of Fortune, Hamlet,
Meeting Venus, The Paper, 101 Dalmatians, 102 Dalmatians, Air Force One,
Cookie's Fortune, The Safety of Objects, Le Divorce, Heights, Things You
Can Tell Just by Looking at Her, Nine Lives, and Evening.
She has been nominated nine times for the Golden Globe Award, winning
for her performance in the television adaptation of The Lion in Winter
(which also earned her a Screen Actors Guild Award) as well as for Damages.
The latter is among the television projects that have brought her ten
Emmy Award nominations, with a win for her portrayal of real-life hero
Margarethe Cammermeyer in Serving in Silence: The Margarethe Cammermeyer
Story, which Close executive produced.
Her other notable films for television include The Elephant Man,
Something About Amelia, Stones for Ibarra and In the Gloaming. She
executive produced and starred in the Sarah, Plain and Tall trilogy, The
Ballad of Lucy Whipple, and the musical remake of South Pacific.
Glenn Close made her professional theater and Broadway debut in Love
for Love. Other early stage credits include The Crucifer of Blood and The
Singular Life of Albert Nobbs, for which she won an Obie Award. Close's
first Tony Award nomination came for her role in the musical Barnum, and
she subsequently won Tony Awards for her performances in The Real Thing and
Death and the Maiden.
For her portrayal of Norma Desmond in Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical
Sunset Boulevard, Close won a Tony Award, a Drama Desk Award, a Los Angeles
Drama Critics Circle Award and a Dramalogue Award. She would later reteam
with the show's director, Trevor Nunn, in London for his Royal National
Theatre revival of A Streetcar Named Desire.
She has been honored with a Crystal Award from Women in Film; a GLAAD
Media Award; a People's Choice Award; the National Association of Theatre
Owners' Female Star of the Year award at ShoWest and a Gotham Award for her
contributions to the New York independent filmmaking community.
Close is a trustee emeritus of The Sundance Institute, with which she
has been associated for more than 17 years. She is also a trustee of The
Wildlife Conservation Society and volunteers at Fountain House in New York
City, a facility dedicated to the recovery of men and women who suffer with
mental illness.
Close was born March 19, 1947 in Greenwich, Connecticut. She graduated
from the College of William and Mary with a degree in drama and
anthropology.
John Howard
The Honorable John Winston Howard, 25th Prime Minister of Australia and
respected world leader, wins the 2008 Common Wealth Award for Government.
Serving from March 1996 until November 2007, Howard has been
Australia's second longest serving Prime Minister. He led the center/right
Liberal Party of Australia for a total of 16 years and was a member of the
House of Representatives for 33 years. Prior to becoming Prime Minister,
Mr. Howard had extensive senior experience in both government and
opposition. He served as Treasurer (finance minister) in a previous
government and led his party in opposition for a number of years.
A conservative on social policy, Mr. Howard pursued broadly pro-market
economic policies in his time as Prime Minister. During his period in
office, Australia experienced continued economic growth averaging 3.6% per
annum.
The federal government budget of Australia was in heavy deficit when
Mr. Howard's government came to power. That deficit was eliminated and 10
of the 12 annual budgets produced by the Howard government during its
almost 12 years of government were in surplus. In that time, $96 billion of
federal government debt was repaid. The Australian government now has no
net debt.
As well as fiscal consolidation, the Howard government undertook major
reform of the Australian taxation system through the introduction of a
goods and services tax, which was accompanied by reductions in personal
income tax and corporate tax rates. He also substantially reformed
Australia's labor laws through a freer and less regulated labor market.
Australia's unemployment rate is now at a 33-year low of 4.3%.
In the field of foreign policy, Australia, under Mr. Howard's
government, was both a strong and close ally of the United States as well
as expanding very extensive links with the nations of Asia. A particular
feature of the Howard government's time in power was the development of the
relationship with China, which is now Australia's largest export market.
Under John Howard's leadership, Australian forces joined the coalition of
the willing in Iraq in March 2003. Some 1,400 Australian military personnel
remain in the Iraqi theatre. Australia has strongly supported the war
against terrorism with her forces continuing to serve alongside American
and other coalition forces in Afghanistan.
John Howard was in Washington on an official visit at the time of the
terrorist attack on September 11, 2001. He addressed a joint sitting of
Congress in 2002. He currently serves as Chairman of the International
Democratic Union -- an international grouping of center/right parties
including the Republican Party.
Mr. Howard's government was also responsible for major reforms in
social policy, including measures to move people from welfare payments into
paid work, the involvement of faith-based and other non- government
organizations in the provision of certain welfare services and a
strengthening of Australia's universal Medicare system.
Shortly after Mr. Howard came to power, he responded to the massacre of
35 people by a lone gunman at Port Arthur in Tasmania with the
implementation of national gun control laws, which drastically curtailed
the possession of many firearms.
John Howard was born in Sydney, Australia, on July 26, 1939. He
graduated from the University of Sydney with a Bachelor of Laws in 1961 and
was admitted as a Solicitor of the New South Wales Supreme Court in July
1962. Prior to his election to Parliament, he was a partner in a Sydney
firm of solicitors.
Ann Curry
Ann Curry, award-winning television journalist and news anchor, wins
the 2008 Common Wealth Award for Mass Communications.
Curry was named co-anchor of Dateline NBC in May 2005 and news anchor
for NBC News' Today in March 1997.
Curry has distinguished herself in global humanitarian reporting. From
March 2006 to March 2007, she traveled three times to Sudan to report on
the violence and ethnic cleansing taking place in Darfur and Chad. While
there, she provided in-depth reports focusing on the victims who have been
caught in the deadly conflict in that region, and she also conducted
exclusive interviews with Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir and Chadian
President Idrsiss Deby. In July 2006, Curry reported on the Israel-Lebanon
war, and she was one of the only American reporters to file stories on both
sides of the conflict from Beruit and Northern Israel.
In the summer of 2005, Curry traveled with First Lady Laura Bush
throughout Africa to discuss issues that plague the continent such as the
HIV/AIDS epidemic and women's rights and education. She was the first
network news anchor to report from inside the tsunami zone in Southeast
Asia, filing live and taped reports from Sri Lanka for Dateline, Today and
NBC Nightly News. She was also the first network news anchor to report on
the humanitarian refugee crisis caused by the genocide in Kosovo, reporting
for NBC News from Albania and Macedonia.
In the first two weeks following the attacks of September 11, Curry
reported live from ground zero every day. When the United States bombed Al
Qaeda targets in Afghanistan in November 2001, she reported extensively
from the USS Theodore Roosevelt in the Arabian Sea and landed the first
exclusive interview with the war's military commander, General Tommy
Franks. Curry reported from Baghdad in the weeks leading up to the war in
Iraq and then from the USS Constellation as the war began, interviewing
fighter pilots who flew the first wave of bombing runs over Iraq. She also
filed reports from inside Iraq, from Qatar, and Kuwait during the first
weeks of the war.
Curry first joined NBC News in August 1990 as a Chicago-based
correspondent. In 1992 she was named anchor of NBC News at Sunrise. She
later helped launch MSNBC and then became news anchor at Today. Before
coming to NBC, Ms. Curry was a reporter for KCBS in Los Angeles. In 1981,
she was a reporter and anchor for KGW, the NBC affiliate in Portland,
Oregon.
Curry began her broadcasting career as an intern in 1978 at KTVL, in
Medford Oregon, near her hometown, rising to become that station's first
female news reporter.
Curry has earned two Emmys, four Golden Mikes, several Associated Press
Certificates of Excellence, two Gracies, and an award for Excellence in
Reporting from the NAACP. In June 2007, she was honored with the Simon
Wiesenthal Medal of Valor for her reporting in Darfur. She has been awarded
by Americares, the Anti-Defamation League as a Woman of Achievement, and
the Asian American Journalists Association, receiving its National
Journalism Award in 2003. She has also won numerous awards for her charity
work, primarily for breast cancer research.
Curry was born November 19, 1956 in Guam. She graduated from the
University of Oregon School of Journalism in 1978.
James E. Hansen
Dr. James Hansen, preeminent climate scientist, wins the 2008 Common
Wealth Award for Science. He is director of the NASA Goddard Institute for
Space Studies in New York City and Adjunct Professor of Earth Sciences at
Columbia University's Earth Institute.
In his early research, Hansen used telescopic observations of Venus to
extract detailed information on the physical properties of the cloud and
haze particles that veil Venus.
Since the mid-1970s, Hansen has focused on studies and computer
simulations of the Earth's climate for the purpose of understanding the
human impact on global climate. He is best known for his testimony on
climate change to Congress in the 1980s that helped raise broad awareness
of the global warming issue.
In recent years, Hansen has drawn attention to the danger of passing
climate tipping points, producing irreversible climate impacts that would
yield a different planet from the one on which civilization developed.
Hansen disputes the contention of fossil fuel interests and governments
that support them that it is an almost god-given fact that all fossil fuels
must be burned with their combustion products discharged into the
atmosphere. Instead, Hansen has outlined steps that are needed to stabilize
climate, with a cleaner atmosphere and ocean, and he emphasizes the need
for the public to influence government and industry policies.
Hansen was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1995. In
2001, he received the Heinz Award for environment and the American
Geophysical Union's Roger Revelle Medal. Hansen received the World Wildlife
Federation's Conservation Medal from the Duke of Edinburgh in 2006 and was
designated by Time magazine as one of the world's 100 most influential
people in 2006. In 2007 Hansen won the Dan David Prize in the field of
Quest for Energy, the Leo Szilard Award of the American Physical Society
for Use of Physics for the Benefit of Society, and the American Association
for the Advancement of Science Award for Scientific Freedom and
Responsibility.
Hansen was born March 29, 1941 in Denison, Iowa. He trained in physics
and astronomy in the space science program of Dr. James Van Allen at the
University of Iowa, receiving his bachelor's degree with highest
distinction in physics and mathematics, master's degree in astronomy, and
Ph.D. in physics in 1967.
Hansen was a visiting student at the Institute of Astrophysics,
University of Kyoto, and Department of Astronomy, Tokyo University, Japan
from 1965-1966. He received his Ph.D. in physics from the University of
Iowa in 1967. Except for 1969, when he was an NSF post-doctoral scientist
at Leiden Observatory under Prof. H.C. van de Hulst, Hansen has spent his
post-doctoral career at NASA GISS.
SOURCE PNC Financial Services
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