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“This year’s recipients of the Order of Lincoln have helped make
Illinois and the world a better place,” Gov. Rauner said. “The work
they have accomplished is admirable, and it is our privilege to
honor them. Mr. Lincoln would be proud.”
This year’s recipients are:
 Arthur
H. Bunn,
CEO of Bunn-O-Matic Corporation
Bunn is a civic and philanthropic leader in Springfield; and a
member of one of Illinois’ pioneer families, whose
great-great-grandfather opened a grocery store in Springfield 170
years ago, with Abraham Lincoln as one of his first customers.
 Ertharin
Cousin, Executive Director of the United Nations World Food
Programme
Cousin heads the world’s largest humanitarian organization, serving
97 million beneficiaries in 80 countries. “My mission is simple,”
she has said, “to end hunger in my lifetime.”
 J.
Roland Folse, surgeon and founding chairman of the Department of
Surgery at the Southern Illinois University School of Medicine
Dr. Folse served on SIU-School of Medicine’s faculty for more than
30 years, and the Folse Endowed Chair of Surgery has been
established in his honor.
 Sara
Vaughn Gabbard, nationally recognized Lincoln Scholar and Executive
Director of the Friends of the Lincoln Collection of Indiana
Gabbard, a native of Lincoln, is entrusted with a prized collection
of Lincoln artifacts, and has devoted her professional career to
increasing the nation’s knowledge of Abraham Lincoln and the times
in which he lived.
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 Gary
Slutkin, Founder and Executive Director of Cure Violence
Dr. Slutkin’s innovative program has worked to reduce shootings and killings,
and Cure Violence now has 52 program sites in 23 U.S. cities and eight nations
of the world. He is a professor of epidemiology and international health at the
University of Illinois at Chicago School of Public Health, where he seeks to
treat violence as he would seek to reverse epidemic disease outbreaks.
 W.
Russell Withers, Jr., Broadcaster –
Founder of Withers Broadcasting Companies Posthumous Honor
The award will also be presented posthumously to one of the last
of a vanishing breed of broadcasting pioneers, the Founder of
Withers Broadcasting Companies which operates six television
stations and 30 radio stations in Illinois and across the
Midwest. Prior to his death, Mr. Withers provided leadership to
a wide range of civic, professional and charitable organizations
including his chairmanship over many years of the Illinois
Broadcasters Foundation.
The Order of Lincoln will be presented at the 51st Annual
Convocation of the Lincoln Academy of Illinois in the chamber of
the Illinois House of Representatives in Springfield on
Saturday, May 9, 2015. The Order of Lincoln was established by
the Governor of Illinois in 1965, and the Lincoln Academy of
Illinois -- an independent, non-partisan organization -- was
created to administer the award and to choose the annual award
recipients.
Following the award presentation on May 9, 2015 a gala reception
and dinner in honor of the 2015 recipients will be held at the
Abraham Lincoln Presidential Museum in Springfield. Funds raised
at the dinner will be used to provide Abraham Lincoln Civic
Engagement Scholarships to one student from each of the 56
four-year colleges and universities in Illinois and one student
representing the state’s community colleges. The students are
chosen by their college presidents on the basis of academic
achievement and community service.
The ceremony and short interviews with the honorees will be
converted into a PBS documentary to be shown on all PBS stations
across Illinois later in the year.
[Lance Trover, Office of the Governor
Bruce Rauner] |
