Albert Lasker
Public Service Award
Robin Chandler Duke
Thomas O'Neill, Jr.
Robin Chandler Duke
For her dedicated efforts to enhance the lives of the worldwide community through family planning and population control.
For the past 25 years, Robin Chandler Duke has been a tireless advocate of family planning, world population stabilization and women's reproductive rights, and she is widely recognized for her effective work on these issues.
Since 1974, Mrs. Duke has served with the Population Crisis Committee, where she is now national chair. The Committee, a Washington-based public policy organization, advocates population stabilization through universal access to voluntary family planning.
While Mrs. Duke's professional accomplishments have spanned the fields of journalism, diplomacy, politics and finance, she traces her commitment to her experiences in Asia and Latin America, where she witnessed the tragedies of many desperate women driven to illegal and unsafe abortions. Her many years of service have been prompted by her general belief that rapid population growth is one of the most important problems facing the world community. She has devoted much time with the Committee to help influence national government, especially in developing countries, to adopt sound population policies.
Robin Duke has been unwavering in her dedication to those concerns. She is a director of the Alan Guttmacher Institute and a former director of Planned Parenthood Federation of America. In 1980, she held the rank of ambassador as head of the U.S. delegation to the UNESCO conference in Belgrade. She worked with the National Abortion Rights Action League for many years and now serves as president emeritus.
Mrs. Duke has worked in many developing countries on family planning projects. In 1980, she was one of the only two women to make a presentation at the first Conference on Population in the Arab World, held in Tunisia in 1983.
Mrs. Duke has been decorated by the governments of Spain and Luxembourg for her work on humanitarian affairs. She is a director on four major corporate boards and uses her energies to shape corporate social policy on population and reproductive issues.
To Robin Chandler Duke, for her achievements in promoting health education, family planning, and world population control, championing often unpopular causes to defend women's reproductive rights, this 1991 Albert Lasker Public Service Award is given.
Thomas O'Neill, Jr.
For his tireless dedication to increasing our nation's commitment to biomedical research, and a lifetime of public advocacy for the disadvantaged.
Speaker O'Neill embodies the belief that every American's birthright is the best health care that our country is capable of providing. Throughout his distinguished 50-year career in public service, he fought forcefully to preserve the caring role of government to help those who cannot help themselves. For many Americans, he has been one of the last links to New Deal idealism.
Most recently, the Speaker, affectionately known as "Tip," has touched the hearts and consciences of the American public by speaking candidly of his two bouts with cancer. His compelling testimony has helped the American people redouble their efforts in the battle against cancer.
Mr. O'Neill, who was House speaker for ten years until his retirement in 1986, served in Congress under eight Presidents and worked tirelessly during those years to guide some of the most important national health legislation in history through Congress. In addition to the National Cancer Act, these included appropriations bills for the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the reauthorization of the NIH, expansion of Medicare services to the disabled and the elderly, and the creation of three additional Institutes and Centers at the NIH.
For many Americans, Speaker O'Neill has been the personification of Democratic politics in this century. He was born into a working class family in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1912 and was elected to the Massachusetts House of Representatives in 1936. In 1952, he was elected to the U.S. Congress, succeeding John F. Kennedy, where he staunchly fought for improved health and education for Americans, often in bitter partisan debates. He was an early congressional opponent of the Vietnam War and led reforms that broadened participation in the legislative process, tightened campaign spending and finance laws, and set tough new standards for financial disclosure for political candidates.
To Thomas O'Neill, Jr., for his deep commitment to the public service of this nation throughout half a century in elective office, for his legislative achievements in the interest of helping those who cannot help themselves, and for a lifetime of public advocacy in behalf of the disadvantaged, this 1991 Albert Lasker Public Service Award is given.