The exact page text, read by your browser's voice.
9 November 2006
The honor that stands: The National Humanities Medal for 2006 went to Mark Noll, the Francis A. McAnaney Professor of History at the University of Notre Dame, one of the nation's foremost historians of American religion. President George W. Bush presented the medal in an Oval Office ceremony on 9 November 2006; the White House announcement lists him as "Mark Noll, Historian of Religion — Notre Dame, IN." The tie is the seated one, at the Notre Dame boundary: Noll's chair, and the work the medal honored — The Search for Christian America and his histories of American Christianity, written with Notre Dame colleagues Nathan Hatch and George Marsden — stood on the campus adjoining this city.
The empty lines: The nation's other three national medals give the city nothing, and are printed empty. No recipient of the National Medal of Science, the National Medal of Arts, or the National Medal of Technology and Innovation was born in South Bend, raised here, or seated here; the rosters of the three granting bodies were read for the city's names and its institutions, and the names are not there. With the Medal of Freedom entries above, the national-medal ledger for this city is exactly four lines long: two medals of freedom, one gold medal of Congress, one humanities medal — and three honest blanks.
Sources:
- The White House (George W. Bush administration), announcement of the 2006 National Medal of Arts and National Humanities Medal recipients, 8 November 2006 — "Mark Noll, Historian of Religion - Notre Dame, IN."
- University of Notre Dame, Department of History — Noll's receipt of the National Humanities Medal in the Oval Office ceremony of 9 November 2006; the McAnaney chair.
- The recipient rosters of the National Medal of Science, the National Medal of Arts (National Endowment for the Arts), and the National Medal of Technology and Innovation (U.S. Patent and Trademark Office), read for any South Bend birth, upbringing, or seat — none appears.