STEVE MINTER: Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to a very special luncheon of our 2002 INDEPENDENT SECTOR Annual Conference. I'm Steven Minter, president of The Cleveland Foundation, and co-chair of the Host Committee. And it's my pleasure to add my welcome to you for all coming to Cleveland and helping this be a very successful occasion.
This Gardner Award Luncheon is a first, as has been noted by many. A sad one, but nevertheless, a first. It is the first such award presentation following the death of John Gardner in February of this year.

He meant so much to so many persons and institutions. And I might say I've been a great follower and fan of his since meeting him in the mid-1960s—as a matter of fact, at a reception right here in this hotel, when he came to the American Rehabilitation Association Conference.
And as he meant so much to us as a co-founder of this organization, there is one person here who can describe that better than anyone. And that is his colleague, co-founder, and president emeritus of INDEPENDENT SECTOR, who received the Gardner Leadership Award in 1994. Ladies and gentlemen, it's my pleasure to ask him to come and make some comments—Brian O'Connell.

BRIAN O'CONNELL: Please, do continue to eat. I'm rather used to this group not paying very close attention to me.

Thank you, Steve. John and Sara and Harris and so many wonderful friends and fellow members of INDEPENDENT SECTOR, I know some of you didn't know John well or didn't have a real opportunity to know very much about him. The programs that you have at your place will provide some very good indication of many of the leadership roles he played with remarkable success. But even that good list can't cover so many, many important organizations that he founded or led so splendidly.

Even if we could list all of the organizations, it wouldn't begin to cover his writings, which increasingly, I think, will turn out to be his largest legacy. With each book, each monograph and speech imparting wisdom and hope, he emerged as the nation's teacher. And that will never end.

For the here and now, it's important to know and to celebrate what he meant to this organization. Rather late in his illustrious career, he put his stunning reputation on the line, taking a gamble on a very long shot, because he believed that the public good might be served. I had approached him for his advice and wisdom on a project I had undertaken to try to look at the futures of CONVO, the Coalition of National Voluntary Organizations, and NCOP, the National Council on Philanthropy, which was founded here in Cleveland some 50 years ago. And later in that process, I approached John and asked him if he would chair the organizing committee that eventually led to the establishment of INDEPENDENT SECTOR. He didn't pause. And over the next two difficult years, he never wavered.

Let me give you a snippet of, a sense of those initial years, reading from Powered by Coalition: The Story of INDEPENDENT SECTOR:

“In the summer of 1995, seventeen years to the month after our first discussion about the need for some greater connectedness within the sprawling third sector, John Gardner and I stole away for two days to share thoughts and recollections about what had occurred in the blur of those intervening years.

“My immediate task was to gain the benefit of John's advice on the history of INDEPENDENT SECTOR, but before we could really get into remembering the facts, remembering the faces, remembering the names, we found that we needed to go back to some essential wonderments as to why we had even taken on such a task, why we had gambled so very much, and why it had succeeded against all those odds.

“It wasn't that we hadn't known what we were getting into. It was that we knew and still went ahead. And our candor was not just in admitting our doubts, but also in admitting a confidence in ourselves that in retrospect seems audacious.

“At times in that conversation, we asked each other, genuinely and uncertainly, whether we had been gamblers or visionaries, foolhardy or courageous, reckless or calculated.

“I remember we let it all hang out—two battle-scarred survivors admitting to fear and bravery. In the end, we admitted that we had thought there was a chance to win, that the cause was worth the gamble, and that the time and climate seemed right. But we also admitted that in fact we had been audacious, reckless, and foolhardy, tempted with at least some doses of courage, confidence, and vision.

“We acknowledged that we had not been risk takers for the sake of it. We had not blindly followed an impulse. We had thrown caution to the wind not for the daring, but because something unusual seemed to be in the wind.

“Looking back, the origins are terribly complex, but the essential dilemma was startlingly clear: something had to be done to preserve and to strengthen America's independent sector. But nothing, absolutely nothing, was likely to succeed.

“The obstacles and the problems, presented to us with intensity and growing litany, and some bitterness that we were taking this all on, dogged all previous efforts at creating an umbrella for this sector—a sector so broad that it defied commonality; antipathies and worse between many of the players; the disdain of university officials to work with grass-roots organizations and vice versa; the determination of funders to keep their distance from grant seekers; fear of the very size of a coalition large enough to span the sector; lack of confidence that such a group could really do anything; reluctance to pay for another level of representation and structure; and on and on and on.

“The only thing that kept us at it in those discouraging early days of consideration was that although almost everyone assured us that every solution was foreclosed, they were equally determined that something had to be tried...

“So, after much more testing, lining up of allies, and persuasion of other important figures to keep an open mind, we finally threw caution to the wind and threw our hearts over the fence for what turned out to be one hell of a ride.”

Now, after almost 25 years, it is all the clearer—crystal clear to me—that all that we here represent, all this happened in these almost 25 years, would never, ever have occurred without John Gardner's leadership. And through all those struggles and successes, John became for me—and I think for a great many of you—mentor, partner, and friend. His example, his words are almost embedded, encoded in our minds and hearts. And how fortunate we are that he was our teacher. And how special it is right now, with him gone, to realize that mentoring also has not ended.

But back to the wider scope of what he represented and what he stood for, I'd like to have you join with me in seeing a video that helps to capture the meaning and memory of this giant who walked among us.

STEVE MINTER: Listening to that and watching that, I'm sure many of us add the word "prophet" to the description of all the words when we think of all of the current things that are going on and consider probably when some of those comments were made.

The field has been fortunate that there have been some great leaders who've received this award. In addition, this past year, to John, the voices of two former Gardner Award recipients were stilled: Antonia Pantoja, a co-recipient in 1991, and Justin Dart, the recipient in 1995. They're gone, but never forgotten. Their spirit and good works will be with us forever.

It is obvious that this John W. Gardner Leadership Award is a highlight of our annual meeting and it has been since its beginning in 1985. In presenting the award each year, not only do we honor very special people in our sector, but we recharge our own batteries for continued creative and effective work in the years to come.

It is now my pleasure to introduce the chairperson of our John W. Gardner Leadership Award Selection Committee, Jill Darrow Seltzer.

JILL DARROW SELTZER: Thank you, Steve.

The John W. Gardner Leadership Award was established by INDEPENDENT SECTOR in 1985 to honor outstanding persons who in their own way exemplify the leadership and ideals of John Gardner. The award consists of $10,000 and a replica of an original relief bust of John Gardner by the late Washington, D.C. sculptor Frederick Hart. The original bronze, along with the names of the award recipients, is on permanent display in INDEPENDENT SECTOR's lobby. And it's true. I've been there. It's true.

Just like John Gardner, the people we honor with this award are individuals who build, mobilize, and unify people, institutions, and causes; and as a result of their efforts, society is better able to address its problems and reach towards its highest aspirations. The distinction here is "builders"—people who, quite apart from noteworthy personal feats, have raised the capacity of others to improve society.

Each year, the choice the John Gardner Committee must make is rigorous and challenging. And I want to take a moment to thank the committee for its very hard work in the selection process. The committee members know how to listen carefully, how to speak with conviction, and ultimately, how to choose between the better and the best.

And now—speaking of the best—to this year's recipient, Harris Wofford.

Harris Wofford's distinguished career in education, law, politics, and public service places him directly in the John Gardner tradition. An author and accomplished public speaker, he is gifted with a capacity for critical thinking and for openness of mind.

He is an innovator rooted in traditional values, and a free spirit steeped in the classics. Perhaps above all, he has been a citizen in the way in which the founding fathers envisioned public spirited persons bringing their talents to public purpose.

Every president since John F. Kennedy has called Harris Wofford into the service of his country and the world. Harris Wofford has sought out the best in Americans and American culture, thereby helping us live into the bold promise of this land we love. And he has dedicated much of his career to the goal of making citizen service a common expectation and experience for all Americans.

While on the White House staff, Wofford helped Sargent Shriver plan and organize the Peace Corps. In 1952, he became the Peace Corps special representative to Africa and director of its large Ethiopia program. Later, in the Johnson administration, he became the Peace Corps associate director.

As a U.S. senator from Pennsylvania, Wofford played a key role in both crafting and working to pass the trail-blazing legislation that created Americorps, the Learn and Serve America program, and the Corporation for National and Community Service, which he later headed.

He was an instrumental figure in organizing the Presidents' Summit for America's Future in 1997, which established America's Promise, the organization he now chairs. 

In 2000, Mr. Wofford convened and chaired the Working Group on Human Needs and Faith-Based Community Initiatives, which produced the 2002 report, “Finding Common Ground.”

Wofford is fond of quoting Sargent Shriver from the days of building the Peace Corps, when Shriver said, "One day, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides, and gravity, after all the scientific and technological achievements, we shall harness the energies of love and then, for the second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire." "That," says Wofford, "is what America and Americorps is all about. Together, young and old and in between, we are going to find the ways and means to make citizen service the common expectation and experience of every American."

In a weary year of fear, anger, frustration, and warfare, we salute a builder, mobilizer, and unifier extraordinaire. One among us who calls us to our best and inspires us to strive with dignity.

It is my great pleasure on behalf of INDEPENDENT SECTOR to present the 2002 John W. Gardner Leadership Award to the Honorable Harris Wofford.

HARRIS WOFFORD: Thank you. Thank you, Jill. Thank you, all of you here, old friends and new. Extraordinary talent here to my left and my right and out in front of me, downstairs and upstairs with the Students In Service to America right now. All of you, you're beautiful. Somehow in this room, together, there's the talent to crack the atom of civic power. And Sara Melendez, you are and will continue to be, in your own being, an independent sector of our public life.

So, in honor of your dedicated work for the common good of the larger independent sector of America, I'll start with the last public words of John Adams on the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Jefferson and he were asked to send messages, and Jefferson wrote a long one. John Adams was too weak to write, but they said “can't you give us from your heart and your voice a message?” He nodded yes. And he said, "Independence forever." Not long afterwards he, and on the same day and Thomas Jefferson, died. But their spirit certainly lives. And what they wrote and did in some ways was the first love of my life as a strange little boy.

So I thank the Selection Committee for this honor, and John Thomas and your colleagues who put together that, to say the least, heartwarming video.

All of us are right to honor the memory of John Gardner, one of the greatest public citizens of our time. He was indeed an uncommon American, to use the title of the wonderful documentary that Rick Stamberger put together and PBS has been playing.

Now, I want to be clear, John Gardner is not my hero, because I stick to the classic definition of a hero, who is a person of big aspirations but who has big flaws that lead to either comic downfall or a tragic fate. I find it very hard to find such flaws in John Gardner. But he certainly has been an example for me of a leader with the three qualities Brian Hehir last night looked to: intellectual understanding, moral core, and catalytic skill.

In the heyday of Senator Joseph McCarthy, a vigilante committee in our family's hometown of Scarsdale, New York—then a great Republican bastion—set forth to purge the public library and the high school library of subversive literature and books. And John Gardner organized a successful committee to stop them. They were trying to—high on their list was to get rid of Louis Untermeyer's collection of poetry. John Gardner aroused my family, my mother and father, to their first political action on that committee.

Half a century later, John Gardner was still in my life when he proposed an Experience Corps, a mobilization of the nation's seasoned citizens, and advised the Senior Corps of the Corporation for National Service, where I was applying my experience at the time, how to tap more of the power, crack the atom of the power of talent and energy of 60 million older Americans.

So thank you for seeing a connection between what John did and what I try to do. Now, I will draw on that connection in a few minutes and point a few directions that I hope the independent sector of America, and this organization as its voice, will move and take the lead.

But first, I was warned that there would be a video that might overstate the case. So I want to give a kind of counter-resume that I was inspired to write last night, late into the night. As the media knows all too well, the darker side is always more interesting than the brighter one.

When I was running for the Senate, the Philadelphia Inquirer endorsed me, saying I had a record of integrity for 30 years. The problem was I was 65 years old. That left 35 years in doubt.

So here are a few of the faults and failures the video left out. You'll see why guidance counselors consider my trajectory the opposite of the careful career planning they usually recommend. That's something John Gardner and I did have in common. At his, I think, last visit to Washington, an assembly convened by Common Cause and INDEPENDENT SECTOR, he said something like this. He was asked if he had followed a career plan, and he said, "I never did, never had one. Just tried to find the right next step."

Now, my most memorable early failure, my sister Ann Wofford Towson, who's here with her husband Pete—brought up their four children in this community—will remember this well. I believe she campaigned for me, not against me, but I ran for junior high school president. And I lost.

And that defeat stuck in my head over the years, so that when I did finally run for office, for the Senate, in the middle of the night—midnight on, when we were dead-tired and my wife wanted to go to the appropriate place called bed—someone would say, well, there's a union hall still meeting where they're drinking some beer; would you like to drop by? And I remembered that defeat in about 1941, and would go to the union hall. I have to say, however, that that approach did not suffice to keep Rick Santorum from retiring me from the Senate in the Republican wave of '94.

My first crusade to change the world after Pearl Harbor was something John Gardner was actually personally interested in. As a 10th grade student—one year after that defeat—in Scarsdale High School, I was drawn to the idea of a union of democracies to win the war and to be a nucleus of a world federation, with the power to keep the peace after the war.

We called it Student Federalists. We spread it around Westchester on bicycles. I don't remember whether Ann went on the bicycle missions, but she worked the mimeograph machine often in our basement. We formed chapters throughout that part of New York, and then we sent things out to debate teams all across the country, including a debate team in South St. Paul headed by Claire, my later wife. And we had a national organization of some power that grew out of high school students. And then after the atomic bomb, the movement spread. Student Federalists spread to colleges and universities in large numbers.

While in the Air Force, I was permitted to go to represent the service, among others, at the founding of the United Nations in San Francisco. I went with high hopes, but then saw the inadequate world organization that was created, with the crippling veto and other limitations. That's no excuse for not paying our dues, but it was not quite the world union we had sought. But at least Claire and I, the third national president of Student Federalists and the first, we formed our own little nuclear union—48 years.

After college, I applied to be a Rhodes Scholar. I didn't make it. I wanted to be a clerk to either Justice Black or Justice Douglas on the Supreme Court, and they chose somebody else. Most of the jobs I actually sought, I didn't get; and almost every job that was important in my life came as a surprise.

I did write a little book while in the Air Force, called "It's Up to Us," but I spent, in the '50s a lot of overtime while practicing law, writing two books that, probably fortunately, were never published.

One of my desires was to learn to fly, and to fight Hitler. But for 15 months we were stalled in Craig Field (Selma, Alabama) while they waited to see whether the Japanese Asian war would need more pilots and navigators. And the war ended before I learned to fly, or before I could fight. That frustration was partially overcome 20 years later when I was walking with Martin Luther King on the five-day march from Selma to Montgomery.

By the way, one of the highest honors I think I ever got until today was when, jokingly, Martin Luther King said I was the only lawyer on his team who would—because I believed in Gandhian civil disobedience—I was the only lawyer on his team who would help him go to jail instead of using all the tricks of the trade to keep him out.

Most of the candidates for president I've campaigned for lost. But I did have a role in Kennedy's 1960 campaign, which he won by 100,000 votes, the equivalent of only one vote per precinct. And there was a thrill that ran down my spine when, on that cold, sunny inaugural day, we heard him turn "ask" into to such a strong verb: "Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country." And later he added, "Ask what you can do for the freedom of man."

The Peace Corps, which was the most tangible result of that call to service, is viewed as a success. And President Bush, thank God, wants to double it and get it back on track. But Kennedy once said to me that it will really be serious, this Peace Corps, when it's at least 100,000 a year. Then, in one decade, we'll have a million mostly young Americans who will have had first-hand experience in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. And then, he said, for the first time, we will have a large base, a large constituency for an intelligent foreign policy.

When Sargent Shriver and others of us in at the beginning left the Peace Corps in '66, it had grown to 15,000 volunteers, was on its way to the goal of 100,000, and we were in 100 countries. But thereafter, it dwindled to under 5,000. It's only at 7,500 today. Millions have lost that opportunity for service learning in the world.

So, too, with national service in America. On page 24 of your program, you can read some bold words that you just heard, I think, up there, too, that have been a long-time refrain of mine: We are going to find the ways and means to make citizen service the common expectation and the common experience of every American.

In his campaign for president, Bill Clinton raised the sights to something very much like that. But Congress only authorized a modest beginning, and then that was cut back in the budget battle of 1995. The Republican majority in Congress was in the process of terminating Americorps when President Clinton asked me to join him in helping to save it.

We set out to make Americorps a nonpartisan institution, like the Peace Corps, in which all Americans could take pride. And in one sense, we succeeded, since Americorps grew year by year to 50,000 and President Bush has embraced it and called for the expansion, by 25,000, of new Americorps members this next year. But from my point of view, it would be a failure if in fact all it does is become an established, noncontroversial institution that levels off at the present stage.

A while back, a reporter writing a feature said to me, "How lucky you were to have worked and served with Martin Luther King, John Kennedy, and Robert Kennedy." I paused. I replied, "Some luck. All three, the leaders that meant the most to me, were killed." And she departed. And I regretted what I said. And I tracked her down and said, "Don't quote me on that, please. Of course I was lucky. We were all lucky to have them in our midst, however short their stay."

Well, so much for the past. I'm lucky to be here with you today in more than one way. I was about to write, "A funny thing happened to me on the way to writing my memoirs," when America's Promise came along with a challenge and invitation I couldn't refuse. But I was going to subtitle the book, "Adventures in the 20th Century." And I'm very glad to be having some now in the 21st century—so I can't use that title.

We're all lucky, I think, to be Americans in what last night was called the uncertain and challenging time.

Now in my remembrance of things past and the lack of many a thing I sought, you may have detected some discouragement. That feeling did sweep over me once. One night in New Orleans with some of you who are here, after a rousing closing session of the National and Community Service conference with Bob Goodwin and other friends in our midst, cheers had gone up at the call for all of us to make citizen service the common expectation of every American—young and old, rich and poor.

Later, well beyond midnight, I was in the middle of Bourbon Street, with the scene on the balcony in full swing, and fat—generally—men with beer bottles and music going into their ears and blasting otherwise out were passing a stream of humanity not at its best, and next to me was a Jehovah's Witness handing out his literature that reminded me of some things I've done in my past.

And I turned to my friends and, as to the common expectation, I said, "It's going to be a long time coming."

But I hope you realize that some realistic discouragement, even for genetic optimists, may be necessary to find our way to think anew and act anew if we want truly to crack the atom of civic power, one of John Gardner's great aims throughout his life. To find the way to do that, we'd better recognize what John also liked to say, “It isn't easily done.”

In that spirit, believing we must be more inventive if we're going to do our duty, let me in summary form put four challenges to you.

First, in his state of the union address, President Bush called on all Americans to dedicate 4,000 hours over their lifetimes, the equivalent of two years, in true service to their neighbors and in efforts to solve our communities' hardest problems.

Now, it may seem odd to have a long-time Democrat come here as an ardent champion of a Republican president's special home front initiative. There were some very valuable ones; I wish more Republicans had done that with President Clinton's special initiative. But right now, I wholeheartedly want to say I support President Bush's call to service. He's right, that a surge of effective civic action to help meet our most pressing human needs would be America's best response on the home front to the assault from overseas. And we Democrats would be wrong to disregard or demean that call to service, or to let partisan skepticism derail this summons to a common ground on which all Americans should come together.

So let's respond to the president's call and let INDEPENDENT SECTOR lead in that response. Working together, let's make our response creative and powerful.

Let's make our first order of business, I suggest, embracing and pressing for the passage of the Citizens Service Act. It is the core of these principles. It deserves your active support now. It's being blocked in Congress, though it had overwhelming Republican and Democratic support in the Republican-led House committee. It's being stalled. It's being delayed. Let the voice of the independent sector be heard.

Second, the most creative and powerful response, I submit, is to make the fate of young people within our reach the most urgent and important priority of citizen service and community mobilization. Last month, the president focused his call to service on young people—children, youth. He urged teachers and schools to begin service projects and activities so that this new school year will jump-start a lifelong habit of service.

If you want to find out more about those initiatives, click onto usafreedomcorps.gov. You'll get the information you want, and you'll find out about the breakthrough network that a lot of us have joined in putting together, combining the information on volunteer opportunities from the major community and national service data banks.

Go further, and click on the just-launched and called Students In Service to America portal and read the guidebook sent out by the White House a few weeks ago to all 130,000 schools in the country.

The president's call to service to students is in line with what we just heard John Gardner say. And it's in line with the recommendations of the National Commission on Service Learning chaired by Senator John Glenn and supported by the Kellogg Foundation's wonderful service learning programs. Read the commission's report, “Learning Indeed: The Power of Service Learning.” And you can see that on www.learningindeed.org.

John Glenn's commission challenges schools in this country—all schools—to see that all students at all levels, every year, have a high-quality service learning experience. What a large step toward making service a common expectation, at least for K-12 students, if we carry out that recommendation.

So embrace this, too, and do so in the light of the leadership and passion of Paul Wellstone, who championed the growth of service learning for all young people, one of his major last initiatives. We miss him. He needs us to pick up that torch. Take up Paul's call, John Glenn's call, John Gardner's call, and the president's call.

The organizations that make up INDEPENDENT SECTOR could play a great part in spreading service learning community by community, school board by school board, superintendent and principal and teacher by each of those in this country, to see that we move rather than letting the Citizens Service Act, which also strengthens service learning, languish in Congress. Move it forward. Help unleash the national optimism and can-do spirit of our young people for the greater good of all of us. The 60 million students, K-12 and college and university, represent another great pool of talent to be tapped—not students who we serve, but students who serve. And they're ready to do it, as the students here could tell you.

Third, another big step toward a common expectation and experience of service at the college and university level that I would like to see INDEPENDENT SECTOR champion is the conversion of at least half of a billion-dollar federal work-study program to serve-study.

In the 1960s, Congress assumed that most of the work-study jobs would be in the community, not on the campus. The reverse happened. When I got to the Senate, more than 95 percent of the jobs, by a GAO study, were on campus. We got through a requirement that at least 5 percent should be in service. I was pressing for 10 percent. Each year, Kennedy said it's all right, we could only get 5 this year, but we'll be back next year. Next year, I wasn't there and he wasn't the head of the committee.

They've gone up to 7 percent now. But the president is calling for 50 percent of the million work-study students to work in the community. Think of a contribution they could make, averaging 10 hours a week, to the nonprofit organizations of the independent sector, those who could use that talent. Half a million whose service could make a difference in your communities.

It would also be an educational boon to those work-study students. As lower-income students, who have to get a financial aid package and do 10 hours a week, which is now on campus, it is very hard to be a volunteer beyond that. And you'll find, on campuses, they are the lowest proportion of volunteers. But the work-study students who've been in the thick of the America Reads tutoring program in this country are said to be the most valuable tutors and the base of many of those tutoring programs around the country. So I urge you to take up the torch for that.

Not just to get legislation, but for you, your nonprofit organizations, to go to the colleges and universities and ask to get work-study students assigned to your programs when you need them. And for students, not just to wait till somebody else produces it and offers it—go and knock on the door of the financial aid officers and say that's what you want to do out in the community.

And fourth, finally, there is the framework for community collaboration provided in the five promises declared at the Philadelphia Summit for America's Future five years ago. As you've heard, that's the campaign that I'm giving my time and energy to. Afterwards, I want to send to each of you a case for this campaign—not to join us in some organization, but to be leaders in the local campaigns and leaders in the organizations that will take up the five promises as a guide to action.

You know it was led by General Powell until he became secretary of state. And behind him, he had the fact that for the first time in history on a domestic issue, all the living presidents had come together. But it was more than that. It was 30 governors, 100 mayors, several thousand national and community leaders, including many of you here. Since then, hundreds of communities have signed on to be Communities of Promise. There are now hundreds of schools and universities of promise, congregations of promise, promise stations, and business organizations of promise.

Such an effort is well under way here in Cleveland, as the mayor said. And I not only thank the mayor, but the Cleveland Foundation, Steve Minter, and many of you here that I'm shortly going to be meeting with. So many of you, upstairs and down, are trying to fulfill those five promises for children and youth.

Now, it was not just a vague call for volunteering in general that took place in Philadelphia, contrary to the media impression that they've stamped on America's Promise. Not at all. It did not leave government off the hook. It called for all levels of government—that's why the governors were there. It was designed to get the leadership of the corporate, the nonprofit, the educational, the faith-based organizations, and citizens themselves to mobilize the force of all sectors of our society to turn the tide for millions of young people in great need and great danger, and to galvanize all the young people themselves to become servant leaders and learn citizenship by doing it.

Now, I won't give you a quiz on the five promises, but just to remind you: First, every child and young person should have an ongoing relationship with a caring adult—if they lack one, a tutor, a mentor, a coach. Second, every child should have a safe place to go during non-school hours, a place with structured activities where they can learn, serve, and play. Third, every child should have a healthy start in life—accessible and affordable health insurance and education for healthy habits. Fourth, everyone should get an effective education providing marketable skills for a competitive economy, including the mother of marketable skills, learning to read. And fifth, every American, while coming of age, should have the opportunity to give back and should be asked to do so through their own service to the community.

When you think about it, aren't those five promises what parents want for their children? Morally and strategically, aren't these five promises the right guide, a good guide—not the only one, but a very good guide to action for our country? I believe they can become the galvanizing goals to give focus and clear objectives for the president's call to service.

If you who comprise the independent sector, upon review and reconsideration of these promises in the light of the opportunity opened by the wake-up call of 9/11 and the president's call in response for service, you could play an important role in making this a central strategy of the next stage of citizen service.

In fact, I would like—I do—ask all of us to do our best in the spirit of John Gardner to lift our sights from the needs of our own organization, and even the needs of this whole independent sector, to the needs of the nation and the world. The question should not be what we need to be more effective or more credible; it is what the nation and above all, I would say, the nation's young people need for us to achieve.

We have promised to fulfill for our children the goals set, we at America's Promise. We look to you and your role through the lens of those needs to rise to this occasion and help take this far beyond our poor power as one organization to make this a campaign in which Americans with force join. This, I think, is in accord with John Gardner's legacy.

Here are the last words I'm going to quote from him today. He wrote, "If you want to train leaders, you have to start early. If you want to keep kids out of prison, you have to start early. But it isn't easily done. We have to conduct research, educate a wider public, mobilize citizen allies. We have to persuade diverse groups to work together—schools, social agencies, the faith community, and all levels of government. Nothing could be more significant for America's future."

Well, those are very good watchwords for us here who want to fulfill the promise of America for all of God's children.

I just want to close with not an apology, but a recognition that this may not seem fair, that after what you've given me today that means so much to me, that I should be asking you for more. But I don't do it for our organization's sake—I do it thinking about the needs of our young people. So what I've done is roll, in a sense, in one funny little ball in the beginning and very serious call to you in the end, what seem to me most important. What's also most important for me is what you, knowing your communities, think is most important. In any case, I'll end with Robert Frost's defense of giving my preferences this way, taking the opportunity of this occasion.
In his poem, "Accidentally On Purpose," he concludes: “And yet for all the help of head and brain/ How happily instinctive we remain/ Our best guide upward further toward the light/ Passionate preference such as love at sight.”

You've had a lot of my passionate preferences. Thank you.

JILL DARROW SELTZER: Thank you, Harris, for taking the call figuratively instead of literally. And your ongoing career of distinguished service provokes all of us to act on behalf of the greater good. Our best wishes to you in your future work.

The brochures on your table give you information on the nomination process for next year's John Gardner Award. As I complete my term on this committee, I can assure you that the wide range of talents represented by the winners of this award is driven by the quality of the names put forward in nomination by you. And I'm pleased to say the choice keeps getting tougher because of the high caliber of nominations put forward by you. The deadline for receiving those nominations is January 31st, and I challenge you to beat out this one.

To Harris and to the John Gardner Committee and to all of you, the nominators, thank you.

STEVE MINTER: Thank you, Jill. Thanks for your leadership on this committee. And Harris, let me add my congratulations, too. Mr. Wofford spoke about America's Promise and the young people. If you turn behind you and look up into the balcony, they're there where they belong, being held up high. Let's give them recognition.


Harris Wofford is Chair of America's Promise and the 2002 John W. Gardner Leadership Award Honoree.