Emory Report

October 2, 2000

Volume 53, No.6

Sills hits high notes for Emory Medalists By Michael Terrazas Performing arts-and two new centers in which to display them-took center stage in more ways than one Sept. 23 in Glenn Auditorium, as opera star Beverly Sills keynoted Alumni Weekend's Emory Medal ceremony for a crowd of roughly 1,000 University graduates. One of the most renowned sopranos of the 20th century, Sills now chairs the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts and is national chair of the March of Dimes Mothers March on Birth Defects. She used her spotlight at Emory to highlight both causes. "We are two-legged animals who require our souls to be fed as well as our tummies," said Sills. "There is a need for all of us to have some beauty in our lives; it is a need two-legged animals have that four-legged animals don't." In introducing her, President Bill Chace called the New York-born Sills a "local girl made good" and sounded every bit the groupie when he announced he'd gotten his copy of Handel's Giulio Cesare, in which Sills performed, autographed by her that morning. Sills commended Emory for the ambitious goal of simultaneously constructing two performing arts centers, one at Oxford and one on the main campus. She encouraged the alumni to support the projects, lamenting that the arts are too often considered a "frill" in the United States-especially in Washington. Sills said she wishes the U.S. government would lend more support to the arts, but she is not in favor of total subsidization. "If you w should have to pay a little for it," she said. "I urge you to be supportive [of the arts center projects]. Those who do should all get awards for their vision and determination." Seven Emory alums did indeed receive awards following Sills' speech, as the University bestowed upon them its highest alumni honor: the Emory Medal. This year's recipients included: Patricia Dwinnell Butler '31L, a career attorney with the U.S. Department of Justice and a founding editor of the Federal Register. Butler was one of two women in her class at Emory Law School, and she was the first woman from the Office of the Solicitor General (now the Office of Legal Counsel) to argue a case before the Supreme Court when she successfully argued Johnson v. Shaughnessy in 1949. Anne Holden Carson '61C, an alumna whose family is decidedly Emory-her husband, brother, middle child, sister-in-law, brother-in-law and daughter-in-law all hold University degrees. Carson has served as a community volunteer and active Emory alum for many years. She has been on the board of directors of Sheltering Arms Daycare Center since 1974, and she's served on numerous committees for the Association of Emory Alumni. James Bayard Carson '61B, husband of Anne and chairman of Carter & Associates, a commerical real estate firm. Carson has served on numerous civic boards, including those of Central Atlanta Progress, the Atlanta College of Art, Families First, the Atlanta-Fulton Commission on Children and Youth, and the Atlanta Economic Development Corp. He is also a former Emory trustee. William N. Kelley '59C, '63M, a physician-researcher, administrator and teacher. Kelley recently ended a 10-year term as executive vice president of the University of Pennsylvania, dean of its medical school and Dunlop Professor of Medicine, Biochemi-stry and Biophysics. He serves on several foundations, and corporate and university boards, including Emory's Board of Trustees. Burness E. Moore '33C, one of the foremost psychoanalysts of his time and associate clinical professor at the Yale School of Medicine for almost 20 years. Moore is a former president of the New York Psychoanalytic Institute, the American Psychoanalytic Association and the Atlanta Psychoanalytic Society. He is coeditor of the medical encyclopedia, Psychoanalytic Terms and Concepts, and he also is a member of Emory's Legacy Society. Jane E. Smith '70G, president of the National Council of Negro Women, an alliance of 38 groups and 250 community organizations. Smith has served as director of development for the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change and program director for The Atlanta Project. A former member of Emory's Board of Visitors, she is also a past board member of Leadership Atlanta and the Atlanta Regional Commission's Vision 20/20 steering committee. F. Dudley Williams '31Ox, retired physicist and university professor. Williams was a civilian scientist in the Radiation Laboratory at Los Alamos, N.M., during World War II. He was named a Guggenheim and National Science Foundation fellow during his faculty tenure at both Ohio State and Kansas State universities. A native of Covington, Ga., Williams has many family members who attended Oxford and Emory, and he wrote about them in A Williams Family: Some Descendants of George Williams of the Albemarle. Return to October 2, 2000 contents page