Five Former Yale Athletes to Receive Bush `48 Leadership Awards

Sept. 5, 2007

The Yale Athletic Department has announced the 2007 recipients of the George H.W. Bush `48 Lifetime of Leadership Award. The class of 2007 Bush Award winners include Richard P. Cooley '44, Charles B. Johnson '54, Anne F. Keating '77, James McNerney '71 and Kurt L. Schmoke '71. The honorees will be recognized at the gala Blue Leadership Ball to be held at the William K. Lanman Center inside Payne Whitney Gymnasium on November 16, the night before the 124th gridiron edition of Yale and Harvard.

This is the fourth biennial Blue Leadership Ball and brings together over 700 alumni and friends of Yale Athletics.

Cooley, a former Bulldog squash player, is the retired CEO of Seafirst Corporation. Johnson, the current CEO of Franklin Resources Incorporated, was a Yale football player. Keating followed up a successful collegiate career in field hockey, basketball and lacrosse at Yale to become the managing director of Korn Ferry International. McNerney, a former Bulldog baseball player, is now the Chairman, CEO and President of Boeing Corporation, while Schmoke, the former lacrosse and football standout who became mayor of Baltimore, is currently the dean of the Howard University School of Law.

"Yale's proud legacy of leadership shines through with this class of honorees," said Yale's Director of Athletics Tom Beckett.

As part of the Blue Leadership Ball, the Department of Athletics recognizes Yale University alumni student-athletes who have successfully demonstrated leadership in all aspects of their lives following graduation. A broadly representative alumni honors committee selected five honorees who exemplify Yale's rich athletic heritage as an important component of the undergraduate educational experience.

"The development of a competitive temperament to ignite the trained intellect may explain many of the contributions this university has made to our planet's insatiable appetite for global leadership," said Jack Embersits '58, the chairman of the leadership honors selection committee and the captain of the 1957 Yale football team. "These selected recipients echo the successful and selflessly committed lifetime of leadership which George H.W. Bush -- the 41st President of the United States -- embodied."

Tickets for the Nov. 16 event are $150, though Yale graduates from the classes of 2003-2007 are $125. Please call (203) 432-1434 or visit our web-site at www.yalebulldogs.com to order tickets and get more information on the dinner.