(Story & Photo by Marco Stoovelaar)
 Presidential Medal of Freedom for Yogi Berra & Willie Mays
Nederlands
 WASHINGTON, D.C. (USA) -
Baseball-legends Yogi Berra and Willie Mays have been honored with the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Fifteen others also received this highest civilian honor bestowed by the President of the United States.
The awards were presented on Tuesday (November 24) by President Barack Obama at the White House.
...The Presidential Medal of Honor was presented in the...
...East Wing of the White House in Washington, DC...
(© Photo: Marco Stoovelaar) |
The Presidential Medal of Freedom is ''presented to individuals who have made especially meritorious contributions to the security or national interests of the United States, to world peace, or to cultural or other significant public or private endeavors".
Yogi Berra, who passed away on September 22, won ten World Series with the New York Yankees, but also served in the US Navy during World War II and took part in the invasion of Normandy on D-Day in 1944.
Berra, a catcher, played 19 seasons in the Major League.
He played in 18 years for the Yankees, then appeared in a few games for the New York Mets when he was a coach there.
Berra was named American League Most Valuable Player three times.
Larry Berra, the oldest son of Yogi, accepted the medal on behalf of his father.
The now 84-year old Willie Mays played 22 seasons in the Major League, including 21 with the New York/San Francisco Giants.
Six of these were in New York and he then played in the next 15 seasons for the team after it had moved to San Francisco.
Mays was named National League MVP twice.
Like Berra, Mays ended his career playing for the New York Mets.
Mays hit 660 homeruns in his impressive career, which is fifth on the all-time list.
Mays served in the US Army and served during the Korean War in 1952.
Other baseball-players, who have been awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom are (in order of decoration) Joe DiMaggio (1977), Jackie Robinson (1984, posthumously), Ted Williams (1991), Hank Aaron (2002), Roberto Clemente (2003, posthumously), Buck O'Neil (2006, posthumously), Frank Robinson (2005), Stan Musial (2011) and Ernie Banks (2013).
The other recipients of the Presidential Medal of Freedom on Tuesday were philanthropist and public servant Bonnie Carroll, politician and member of Congress Shirley Chisholm (posthumously), Cuba-born musician Emilio Estefan, Cuban-born singer Gloria Estefan, environmental leader Billy Frank, Jr. (posthumously), politician en member of Congress Lee Hamilton, physicist, space scientist and mathematician Katherine G. Johnson, politician and member of Congress Barbara Mikulski (longest-serving female Senator), Israelian violinist Itzhak Perlman, attorney and government official William Ruckelshaus, theater composer Stephen Sondheim, movie director/producer Steven Spielbierg, singer-songwriter and actress Barbra Streisand, singer-songwriter/guitarist James Taylor and Japanese American lawyer Minoru Yasui (posthumously).
The 97-year old Katherine Johnson began working in 1953 for NACA, the predecessor of NASA, which oversees all American space-activities.
NACA had hired women since 1935 for the work of measuring and calculating the results of wind tunnel tests.
Back then, the job title for those women was 'computer', which remained so until the early sixties.
Katherine Johnson later combined her math talent with the newly introduced electronic computers.
She became a leading pioneer and was involved in all manned spaceflights including, Mercury, Gemini, Apollo (moon flights) and Space Shuttle.
The Presidential Medal of Freedom was established in 1963 then-President John F. Kennedy and replaced the earlier Medal of Freedom that was established in 1945 by then-President Harry S. Truman to honor civilian service during World War II.
The medal can be awarded to an individual more than once and also can be awarded posthumously.
The medal is not limited to American citizens only.
The medal also has been awarded to several foreign heads of state or politicians, as well as to representatives in several other categories.
Amongst the recipients coming from outside the USA are Dutch-born abstract expressionist Willem de Kooning (1904-1997) and Dutch politician Joseph Luns (1911-2002), who was the longest-serving Minister of Foreign Affairs (1952-1971) and then became the longest-serving Secretary General of the NATO (1971-1984).
They respectively received the medal in 1964 and 1984.
(November 25)
|
