For Immediate Release: May 21, 2007
Further information: Brent R. Carney (617) 514-1662, Brent.Carney@JFKLFoundation.org
Boston MA – Mayor Bill White of Houston, Texas, and Doris Voitier, Superintendent of Schools for St. Bernard Parish, Louisiana, were presented the prestigious John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award today by Caroline Kennedy and Senator Edward M. Kennedy in recognition of their courageous and decisive leadership in addressing the human misery and ruin caused by Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
Mayor White, who offered refuge in Houston to displaced residents of Louisiana and Mississippi, and School Superintendent Voitier, who overcame federal bureaucracy to rebuild and reopen the public schools despite the complete destruction of the parish, were recognized at a ceremony at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum for having exemplified the best in political leadership to meet the needs of communities devastated by Hurricane Katrina.
Past recipients of the award include President Gerald Ford, U.S. Representative John Murtha, former Navy General Counsel Alberto Mora, Ukraine President Viktor Yushchenko, U.S. Senators John McCain and Russell Feingold, Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin, and former Governors Roy Barnes (GA) and David Beasley (SC).
“Mayor Bill White and Doris Voitier demonstrated tremendous courage and leadership in the face of extraordinary odds and they serve as an inspiration to us all,” said Caroline Kennedy, President of the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation. “Mayor White’s quick actions in welcoming thousands of families displaced by hurricanes Katrina and Rita most certainly helped to save lives. Despite insurmountable odds, Doris Voitier rebuilt the schools of St. Bernard Parish, making sure the children of her community had a place to learn and grow when they returned home. They are both true profiles in courage.”
“Mayor Bill White and Superintendent Doris Voitier are extraordinary examples of courage and leadership,” said Senator Kennedy. “In the midst of the immense devastation and despair brought on by Hurricane Katrina, they rose to the challenge. They’re true profiles in courage, and I know that President Kennedy would be proud of them today.”
The John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award is presented annually to public servants who have made courageous decisions of conscience without regard for the personal or professional consequences. The award is named for President Kennedy’s 1957 Pulitzer Prize-winning book, Profiles in Courage, which recounts the stories of eight U.S. senators who risked their careers, incurring the wrath of constituents or powerful interest groups, by taking principled stands for unpopular positions. This year marks the 50th anniversary of John F. Kennedy’s Pulitzer Prize. The John F. Kennedy Library Foundation created the Profile in Courage Award™ in 1989 to honor President Kennedy’s commitment and contribution to public service. It is presented in May in celebration of President Kennedy’s May 29th birthday. The Profile in Courage Award is represented by a sterling-silver lantern symbolizing a beacon of hope. The lantern was designed by Edwin Schlossberg and crafted by Tiffany & Co.
As the Mayor of Houston, Texas, Bill White marshaled the resources and goodwill of his city to provide refuge and essential services to hundreds of thousands of people who fled the Gulf Coast after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. White led a community-wide effort that included diverting convention and event business to open the region's convention center and public facilities to tens of thousands of evacuees. When the federal emergency response faltered in the days and weeks following the crisis, White mobilized more than 100,000 Houstonians in the public, private, business and faith-based communities to help evacuees rebuild their lives with independence and dignity. Houston offered innovative programs to provide more than 100,000 evacuees with long-term housing, job placement services and public education. White, a former businessman and attorney who served as U.S. Deputy Secretary of Energy from 1993-1995, risked substantial public criticism to meet the challenges of a sudden, massive influx of evacuees and the subsequent large, permanent increase in Houston's population. White is being recognized for his political courage in leading a compassionate and effective government response to the disaster.
Beginning her career as a math teacher, Doris Voitier had served in the St. Bernard Parish public school system for more than 30 years when she was appointed Superintendent in August, 2004. One year later, when every building in St. Bernard Parish was damaged or destroyed by Hurricane Katrina, Voitier worked boldly and tirelessly, without help from the state or federal government, to reopen school doors to any student who might return home. With one borrowed computer, no working phones, and no emergency grant money, Voitier took out loans to hire disaster clean-up teams, secure portable classrooms, and rent trailers to house a skeletal teaching staff that agreed to work for reduced pay. Just weeks after the storm, Voitier reopened the first school to some 300 returning students, out of more than 8,000 who had been enrolled in parish schools before the disaster. By August 2007, just two years after the community succumbed to 15 feet of water, St. Bernard Parish will have reopened five school buildings to serve nearly 4,000 returning students. Voitier is being honored for her courageous fight to rebuild the St. Bernard Parish schools in the face of pervasive devastation and bureaucratic indifference.
In selecting a recipient, the Profile in Courage Award Committee considers public servants who have demonstrated the kind of political courage described by John F. Kennedy in Profiles in Courage. In his Pulitzer Prize-winning book, Kennedy wrote:
In whatever arena of life one may meet the challenge of courage, whatever may be the sacrifices he faces if he follows his conscience – the loss of his friends, his fortune, his contentment, even the esteem of his fellow men – each man must decide for himself the course he will follow. The stories of past courage can define that ingredient – they can teach, they can offer hope, they can provide inspiration. But they cannot supply courage itself. For this each man must look into his own soul.
Bill White and Doris Voitier were chosen as the recipients of the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation’s prestigious award for political courage by a distinguished bipartisan committee of national, political, and community leaders. Al Hunt, Washington Executive Editor of Bloomberg News, chairs the 13-member Profile in Courage Award Committee. Committee members are Michael Beschloss, author and presidential historian; David Burke, former president of CBS News; U.S. Senator Thad Cochran (R-Mississippi); Marian Wright Edelman, president of the Children’s Defense Fund; Antonia Hernandez, president and chief executive officer of the California Community Foundation; Elaine Jones, former director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund; Caroline Kennedy, president of the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation; U.S. Senator Edward M. Kennedy (D-Massachusetts); Paul G. Kirk, Jr., chairman of the board of directors of the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation; John Seigenthaler, founder of the First Amendment Center at Vanderbilt University; U.S. Senator Olympia Snowe (R-Maine); and Patricia M. Wald, former judge of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. John Shattuck, chief executive officer of the Kennedy Library Foundation, staffs the Committee. Mr. Shattuck is a former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State and a former U.S. ambassador to the Czech Republic.
Past recipients of the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award are former Navy General Counsel Alberto Mora; U.S. Representative John Murtha; Ukraine President Viktor Yushchenko; United States Army Sergeant Joseph Darby; Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin; former Texas Lieutenant Governor Bill Ratliff; Afghan physician and human rights activist Dr. Sima Samar; former North Carolina State Representative Cindy Watson; former Oklahoma State Senator Paul Muegge; former Georgia Governor Roy Barnes; former South Carolina Governor David Beasley; former Georgia State Representative Dan Ponder, Jr.; United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan; former Palos Heights, Illinois, Mayor Dean Koldenhoven; former U.S. President Gerald Ford; former California State Senator Hilda Solis; U.S. Senator John McCain of Arizona; U.S. Senator Russell Feingold of Wisconsin; Garfield County, Montana Attorney Nickolas Murnion; Circuit Court Judge of Montgomery County, Alabama Charles Price; former Calhoun County, Georgia School Superintendent Corkin Cherubini; former U.S. Congressman Michael Synar of Oklahoma; U.S. Congressman Henry Gonzalez of Texas; former New Jersey Governor James Florio; former Connecticut Governor Lowell Weicker, Jr.; former U.S. Congressman Charles Weltner of Georgia; and former U.S. Congressman Carl Elliott, Sr. of Alabama.
Special Profile in Courage Awards have been presented to the Irish Peacemakers, eight political leaders of Northern Ireland and the American chairman of the peace talks, in recognition of the extraordinary political courage they demonstrated in negotiating the historic Good Friday Peace Agreement and America’s public servants who demonstrated extraordinary courage and heroism in response to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. A Profile in Courage Award for Lifetime Achievement has also been presented to U.S. Congressman John Lewis of Georgia.
The John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum is a presidential library administered by the National Archives and Records Administration and supported, in part, by the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation, a non-profit organization. The Kennedy Presidential Library and the Kennedy Library Foundation seek to promote, through educational and community programs, a greater appreciation and understanding of American politics, history, and culture, the process of governing and the importance of public service.