A Glimpse in their Lives
1998 Honorees
Caring about community--whether on a local, national or worldwide scale--has been the central focus of Jing Lyman's life. And so it continues to be in her 73rd year. Phrases such as "social entrepreneur," "career volunteer," and "pump-primer" barely begin to describe the enthusiasm, energy and organizational skills of this remarkable woman.Words cannot capture the deep, infectious chuckle or the strong, kindly face, animated under bangs that have been her style for a lifetime that spans the decades since the New Deal.
In the 1930s, when she lived at the vortex of that social revolution in Washington, D.C., her father was a Roosevelt appointee to the newly established National Labor Relations Board, a position he held for 25 years. Her mother worked in the Resettlement Administration and, after 1938, with the American Friends Service Committee in Philadelphia to bring refugees from Europe to the United States as war loomed. Politics and public service resonated in family life. |
Bill Miller settles into his armchair by the living room fireplace, the same chair from which he put questions to all his early "Conversation Piece" guests, back in the days when the Cable Co-op program was taped in his home. But, for once, the interviewer is to talk about himself. Born in 1922 in Monaca, Pa., a small Ohio River town 25 miles downstream from Pittsburgh, Miller remembers feeling a little out of step with his peers. The son of the local real estate and insurance broker, he soon discovered that he was brighter than most in a mill-town community that placed little value on brainpower.His mother, Mary, was the exception. She herself had never been to college, but as a teacher she knew the doors that education could unlock, and she was determined to point her children in the right direction. It was largely due to her that Bill moved directly from first to third grade, and, when the time came to graduate, he was one of only two in his class of 110 to go on to college.
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'I believe that it is a holy enterprise to understand the needs of people, and to help them, yet at the same time leaving them with their dignity and their pride." Rose Kleiner pauses to gaze out of the window of her basement office in the Los Altos Hills home that she shares with her husband, Eugene. Outside a torrential spring rain all but obliterates the view. For perhaps half a minute Kleiner is silent, and then she resumes the story of her life.Born Rose Wassertheil, the eldest of three children, in the little town of Katowice, not long after the region had voted to become a part of Poland, she remembers the strength of her family's values.
Her father was a prosperous textile merchant, "a kind and generous man with a profound love of humanity and of every living creature. He was a wonderful example for me." |
When listening to Cleo Eulau, one gets the sense of a being in the presence of a continuous flowing stream, one where all the tributaries--family, professional associations in social work, and community activities--have blended together to form a single continuous evolving motion. As Eulau likes to point out, the elements of her life have become so intertwined that even she has a hard time separating them into individual components. But it is her intense interest in human relationships and in helping people that have been the primary motivating forces in a life rich with professional recognition and admiration by peers, friends and family.Eulau was born and raised in Manhattan, where her father operated a drug store. She attended the High School of Music and Art, where she played the cello.
Eulau was encouraged by her parents to be successful in her endeavors. |
Stanford University's celebrated provost, Condoleezza Rice, has served two U.S. presidents, negotiated with world leaders, flourished in the highest echelons of academia, sat on America's most powerful corporate boards, and been dubbed one of the country's "best and brightest" by esteemed national publications. But in her extensive travels, the provost is just as likely to run across an acquaintence touched in some fashion by the remarkable life of her father--John W. Rice--as by her own.By all accounts there are thousands of men and women scattered about the country--in places like Tuscaloosa, Ala., and Burlington, N.C., and Denver and East Palo Alto--whose lives have been shaped, guided or influenced by the man referred to with reverence as Dr. Rice.
Speaking with the elder Rice about his 74 years is like taking a long, steady journey that transcends time, geography, culture and race. |