Contact: Doug Hanks 410-810-7141 [email protected]
JFK JR. TO SPEAK AT WASHINGTON COLLEGE GRADUATION
Student winner of $40,000 Kerr writing prize also to be named that day
CHESTERTOWN, MD -- John F. Kennedy Jr., magazine editor and advocate for the disabled, will speak at Washington College's commencement exercises on Sunday, May 23.
The editor of George will receive a citation honoring his work with "Reaching Up," the non-profit foundation he heads that is dedicated to improving services available to the disabled.
The ceremonies begin at 10:30 a.m. on the Front Lawn of the College.
Kennedy's appearance on the graduation dais comes almost 40 years after his father visited Washington College while launching his Maryland campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination. The elder Kennedy promised to return if elected, but never did. Some on campus are viewing John F. Kennedy Jr.'s graduation appearance as something of a symbolic fulfillment of that promise.
Also being honored at graduation will be Don Higginbotham, author of George Washington and the American Military Tradition, and C.N. Yang, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist.
Another coveted honor will go to this year's winner of the Sophie Kerr Prize, an annual award worth some $40,000 in cash given to the graduating senior picked as the best writer in the class. Created by Kerr, a successful writer of light fiction in the 1920s, the Prize is the largest undergraduate award for writing in the country.
Competition for the award is stiff, as it forms the Holy Grail of the thriving community of writers on campus. The cash prize comes with no strings attached, and was designed by Kerr to finance the literary pursuits of the winner for about a year.
Some have questioned whether the purse has gotten too large (it is funded by the earnings of an endowment Kerr created in 1967), but supporters of the Prize contend it simply encourages great writing at Washington College.
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