Everybody, please have a seat.

We've got some work to do here.

(laughter)

This is not all fun and games.

Welcome to the White House, everybody.

Today, we celebrate extraordinary Americans who

have lifted our spirits, strengthened our union,

pushed us toward progress.

I always love doing this event, but this is a

particularly impressive class.

We've got innovators and artists.

Public servants, rabble rousers, athletes, renowned

character actors -- like the guy from Space Jam.

(laughter)

We pay tribute to those distinguished individuals

with our nation's highest civilian honor -- the

Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Now, let me tell you a little bit about each of them.

First, we came close to missing out on Bill and

Melinda Gates' incredible partnership.

Because apparently Bill's opening line was, "Do you

want to go out two weeks from this coming Saturday?"

(laughter)

He's good with computers, but --

(laughter)

Fortunately, Melinda believes in second chances.

And the world is better for it.

For two decades, the Gates Foundation has worked to

provide lifesaving medical care to millions -- boosting

clean water supplies, improving education for our

children, rallying aggressive international

action on climate change, cutting childhood mortality

in half.

The list could go on.

These two have donated more money to charitable causes

than anyone, ever.

Many years ago, Melinda's mom told her an old saying:

"To know that even one life has breathed easier because

you lived -- that is success." By this and just

about any other measure, few in human history have been

more successful than these two impatient optimists.

Frank Gehry has never let popular acclaim reverse his

impulse to defy convention.

"I was an outsider from the beginning," he says, "so for

better or worse, I thrived on it." The child of poor

Jewish immigrants, Frank grew up in Los Angeles, and

throughout his life he embraced the spirit of a

city defined by an open horizon.

He's spent his life rethinking shapes and

mediums, seemingly the force of gravity itself; the idea

of what architecture could be he decided to upend --

constantly repurposing every material available, from

titanium to a paper towel tube.

He's inspiring our next generation through his

advocacy for arts education in our schools.

From the Guggenheim, to Bilbao, to Chicago's

Millennium Park -- our hometown -- to his home in

Santa Monica, which I understand caused some

consternation among his neighbors --

(laughter)

- Frank's work teaches us that while buildings may be

sturdy and fixed to the ground, like all great art,

they can lift our spirits.

They can soar and broaden our horizons.

When an undergraduate from rural Appalachia first set

foot on the National Mall many years ago, she was

trying to figure out a way to show that "war is not

just a victory or a loss," but "about individual

lives." She considered how the landscape might shape

that message, rather than the other way around.

The project that Maya Lin designed for her college

class earned her a B+ --

(laughter)

-- and a permanent place in American history.

(laughter)

So all of you B+ students out there.

(laughter)

The Vietnam Veterans Memorial has changed the way

we think about monuments, but also about how we think

about sacrifice, and patriotism, and ourselves.

Maya has given us more than just places for remembering

-- she has created places for us to make new memories.

Her sculptures, chapels, and homes are "physical act[s]

of poetry," each reminding us that the most important

element in art or architecture is human emotion.

Three minutes before Armstrong and Aldrin touched

down on the moon, Apollo 11's lunar lander alarms

triggered -- red and yellow lights across the board.

Our astronauts didn't have much time.

But thankfully, they had Margaret Hamilton.

A young MIT scientist -- and a working mom in the '60s --

Margaret led the team that created the onboard flight

software that allowed the Eagle to land safely.

And keep in mind that, at this time, software

engineering wasn't even a field yet.

There were no textbooks to follow, so, as Margaret

says, "There was no choice but to be pioneers."

Luckily for us, Margaret never stopped pioneering.

And she symbolizes the generation of unsung women

who helped send humankind into space.

Her software architecture echoes in countless

technologies today.

And her example speaks of the American spirit of

discovery that exists in every little girl and little

boy who know that somehow, to look beyond the heavens

is to look deep within ourselves -- and to figure

out just what is possible.

If Wright is flight and Edison is light, then Hopper

is code.

Born in 1906, Rear Admiral Grace Murray Hopper followed

her mother into mathematics, earned her PhD from Yale,

and set out on a long and storied career.

At age 37, and a full 15 pounds below military

guidelines, the gutsy and colorful Grace joined the

Navy and was sent to work on one of the first computers,

Harvard's "Mark One." She saw beyond the boundaries of

the possible, and invented the first compiler, which

allowed programs to be written in regular language

and then translated for computers to understand.

While the women who pioneered software were

often overlooked, the most prestigious award for young

computer scientists now bear her name.

From cell phones to cyber command, we can thank Grace

Hopper for opening programming to millions more

people, helping to usher in the information age and

profoundly shaping our digital world.

Speaking of really smart people --

(laughter)

-- in the summer of 1950, a young University of Chicago

physicist found himself

at Los Alamos National Laboratory.

Dick Garwin was there, he said, because Chicago paid

its faculty for nine months but his family ate for 12.

So by the next summer, Dick had helped create the

hydrogen bomb.

And for the rest of his life, he dedicated himself

to reducing the threat of nuclear war.

Dick's not only an architect of the atomic age.

Ever since he was a Cleveland kid tinkering with

his father's movie projectors, he's never met a

problem he didn't want to solve.

Reconnaissance satellites, the MRI, GPS technology, the

touchscreen all bear his fingerprints.

He even patented a "mussel washer" for shellfish --

which I haven't used.

The other stuff I have.

(laughter)

Where is he?

Dick has advised nearly every President since

Eisenhower -- often rather bluntly.

Enrico Fermi -- also a pretty smart guy himself --

is said to have called Dick "the only true genius" he

ever met.

I do want to see this mussel washer.

(laughter)

Along with these scientists, artists, and thinkers, we

also honor those who have shaped our culture from the

stage and the screen.

In her long and extraordinary career, Cicely

Tyson has not only succeeded as an actor, she has shaped

the whole course history.

Cicely was never the likeliest of Hollywood stars.

The daughter of immigrants from the West Indies, she

was raised by a hardworking and religious mother who

cleaned houses and forbade her children to attend

the movies.

But once she got her education and broke into the

business, Cicely made a conscious decision not just

to say lines, but to speak out.

"I would not accept roles," she said, "unless they

projected us, particularly women, in a realistic light,

[and] dealt with us as human beings." And from "Sounder,"

to "The Trip to Bountiful," to "The Autobiography of

Miss Jane Pittman," Cicely's convictions and grace have