The exact page text, read by your browser's voice.
25 September 2012
Fort Wayne's one documented day with a Nobel laureate belongs to a visitor. Aung San Suu Kyi, who received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991 and spent most of the intervening two decades under house arrest in Burma, made Fort Wayne a stop on her first American tour in twenty-four years because the city held one of the largest Burmese refugee communities in the United States. On the morning of Tuesday, 25 September 2012, she spoke in Burmese, with English translation on the arena screens, at the Allen County War Memorial Coliseum; the Associated Press put the crowd at about 5,100, most of them Burmese, many of them seeing her for the first time since the 1988 crackdown in their homeland. Indiana University–Purdue University Fort Wayne was among the appearance's cosponsors. The full account of the visit — who introduced her, what the day meant to the community that drew her, and how that community came to be here — is told in the Communities section and is not retold here. The ledger entry is the honor itself: the 1991 Peace Prize, and the morning its holder spent in Fort Wayne. No other laureate's appearance in the city surfaced in the press record searched; the Nobel lecturers who have visited Indiana campuses have spoken at Bloomington and West Lafayette, not here.
Sources:
- Associated Press report of the 25 September 2012 appearance (carried by WILL, Illinois Public Media) — the crowd of about 5,100 at Memorial Coliseum.
- IPFW (now Purdue University Fort Wayne), cosponsor announcement of the appearance, September 2012.
- NobelPrize.org — Aung San Suu Kyi, Nobel Peace Prize 1991.
- The Communities section of this history for the visit in full and the community behind it.