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The President: Thank you.
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
helped for us see the dignity of every single