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Follow on Google News |  2011 North Carolina Awards Presented to Six Citizens for Service, Arts and Science ContributionsGov. Bev Perdue presented the North Carolina Award to six distinguished recipients in the areas of Fine Arts, Literature, Public Service and Science in a ceremony Nov. 10.
By: North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources The award is administered by the N.C. Department of Cultural Resources (www.ncculture.com) The 2011 recipients are: Charles E. Hamner – Public Service Biotechnology industries flourish in the Tar Heel State, backed by support from academics, industry and state government. Charles Hamner is credited with a key role in propelling the state to biotech preeminence. He studied animal husbandry at Virginia Tech, earned three degrees in science from the University of Georgia and then taught at the University of Virginia School of Medicine. In the late 1960s and early 1970s Hamner’s research focused on animal reproductive systems, laying the groundwork for human in-vitro fertilization. A project related to the biochemistry of blood produced information critical to transplant surgeries. Hamner’s success in converting research into viable commercial applications resulting in his selection to head the N.C. Biotechnology Center in 1988, where he helped persuade the government to fund major discovery programs, aided by about $850 million in private grants. He created a convertible loan fund that helped 52 biotech start-up companies obtain $450 million in venture capital, resulting in facilities worth $900 million that generated 6,000 new jobs. After retiring in 2002 he was appointed Chairman of the Board of the Chemical Institute for Industrial Toxicology, renamed the Hamner Institutes for Health Sciences in his honor; it guides innovative chemical and pharmaceutical development with emphasis on product safety. H. Martin Lancaster – Public Service Over the past 50 years North Carolina has invested in 58 community colleges with annual enrollment of over 800,000 as the the primary agency for job training and adult education, with no greater advocate than Harold Martin Lancaster. The attorney grew up on a Wayne County tobacco farm, completed law school at UNC, served the Navy as a judge advocate general and returned home to practice law. In eight years in the N.C. State House, he championed the highway safety bill and the guardian ad litem law. He then served in the U.S. House, increasing military jobs in the eastern Third District. As president of the community college system he advocated for $600 million in community college bond funds and the extension of the university system relationship to allow lateral entry into UNC institutions. As a past N.C. Arts Council chairman he helped boost arts funding. Trudy F. C. Mackay – Science Trudy Florence Charlene Mackay used fruit flies from the State Farmer’s Market in Raleigh to genetically sequence 192 lines of the Drosophila fly, each assessed for various complex traits for genetic research. Her flies have become a major, standardized resource for the scientific community. The Canadian native earned undergraduate and graduate degrees in Nova Scotia and Scotland. At N.C. State University she is the William Neal Reynolds Distinguished Professor of Genetics and Entomology. Mackay is committed to diversity in higher education and is co-author of the most widely-used textbook on behavioral genetics. Her work has been recognized by several scientific organizations including the Royal Society of the United Kingdom and the Genetics Society of America. Branford Marsalis – Fine Arts Internationally respected saxophonist Branford Marsalis set down roots in Durham 10 years ago in the home state of John Coltrane and Thelonious Monk. The New Orleans native and his family were honored in 2011 by the National Endowment for the Arts with an unprecedented Jazz Masters Fellowship group award. He studied at the Berklee College of Music but received practical training on the road with several well-known bands. His interests extend to classical music, the blues and funk. He hosted the weekly program "JazzSet" on National Public Radio. The Branford Marsalis Quartetreceived the Grammy for Best Jazz Instrumental Album. Last year his score for August Wilson’s play "Fences" brought him a Tony Award nomination and a Drama Desk Award. It was Marsalis' gig as bandleader on "The Tonight Show" from 1992-95 that propelled his public image. Afterwards he delved more deeply into the classical realm, both as composer, performer and university instructor (including N.C. Central University). Marsalis has been a featured soloist with the North Carolina Symphony and served on its board. A 2003 album is a tribute to Charlotte-born visual artist Romare Bearden. The following year his live performance of Coltrane’s "A Love Supreme" appeared. His latest CD is "Songs of Mirth and Melancholy" with pianist Joey Calderazzo. He has served as the spokesman for the Library Card campaign for the State Library. Ron Rash – Literature “Too much too soon disappears.” That line from a 2002 poem defines a life’s work for Ron Rash. Since 2003 the professor of Appalachian Studies at Western Carolina University, he is the author of 14 books -- novels, collections of short stories, and volumes of poetry. His work features respect for mountain people, history and culture. A native of the foothills of Chester, S.C., he moved with his family to Boiling Springs and met relatives working as mill hands who maintained close ties to the mountains they had left for jobs. As a boy he spent summers on his grandmother’ Respect for his elders is a distinguishing feature of his work. One childhood memory is his grandfather's vivid, but changing, stories of mischief in "The Cat in the Hat"; he later learned his grandfather could not read and had made up the stories. After graduating from Gardner-Webb and Clemson University, Rash taught English in high school, technical college and at Clemson before moving to Cullowhee. Many of his works are set in upcountry South Carolina, but the setting for his 2009 novel "Serena" is North Carolina's Jackson County. He has received many prizes, among them the O. Henry Award and the Sir Walter Raleigh Award. In 2011 he was inducted into the Fellowship of Southern Writers. Vollis Simpson – Fine Arts An unintentional artist, Vollis Simpson entered that world at an age when most people retire. He had spent years creating, building and repairing machines to lift heavy items. At about age 65, he turned to creating large-scale wind-driven kinetic metal sculptures he calls windmills (others call them whirligigs) that have astonished people worldwide. Simpson left Lucama for the U.S. Army Air Corps, stationed on Saipan during World War II with no fuel or electricity; Returning home, he opened a repair shop and house-moving business. In the mid-1980s injury forced him to close his business, so he used his heavy equipment to make whirligigs he had envisioned in his dreams, turning old wheels, scrap metal, odds and ends, into a roadside attraction on his brother’s farm. He created the signature piece outside the American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore, plus a large whirligig in the N.C. Museum of Art park. The City of Wilson hosts festivals to celebrate Simpson’s work and, with the N.C. Arts Council, will show 29 of his restored whirligigs in a two-acre public park that has received grants from 11 American foundations and the National Endowment for the Arts. # # # The N.C. Department of Cultural Resources is the state agency with the mission to enrich lives and communities, and the vision to harness the state’s cultural resources to build North Carolina’s social, cultural and economic future. www.ncculture.com End
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