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OFE News Release

Author, Historian Doris Kearns Goodwin to Speak at State Academic Awards Banquet

Goodwin

OKLAHOMA CITY -- Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and NBC News commentator Doris Kearns Goodwin will be the keynote speaker for the Oklahoma Foundation for Excellence’s 22nd annual Academic Awards Banquet, scheduled for 6:30 p.m. Saturday, May 17, at the Renaissance Tulsa Hotel and Convention Center, 6806 S. 107th East Ave. in Tulsa.

“Leading the Way” is the theme for this year’s banquet, which will honor 100 of Oklahoma’s top public high school seniors as Academic All-Staters and four outstanding educators and an alternative education program as Medal for Excellence winners. Admission to the banquet is $50 per person, and reservations can be made by contacting the Oklahoma Foundation for Excellence at (405) 236-0006.

Goodwin, who will speak on “Leadership Lessons from Abraham Lincoln,” is the author of the best-selling book “Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln.” A biopic film based on the book is being developed by Director Steven Spielberg, with actors Liam Neeson and Sally Field starring as Abe and Mary Todd Lincoln.

A frequent guest historian on news programs and documentaries, Goodwin also has written bestselling books on the Kennedys, Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt and Lyndon B. Johnson. Her 1987 political biography “The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys” stayed on the New York Times bestseller list for five months and was made into a six-hour ABC miniseries. Her book “No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The American Home Front During World War II,” earned numerous awards, including the Pulitzer Prize in April 1995.

In addition to writing on politics, Goodwin is a renowned expert on baseball and was the first female journalist to enter the Red Sox locker room. Her best-selling book “Wait Till Next Year: A Memoir,” published in 1997, is about growing up in the 1950s in love with the Brooklyn Dodgers.

Born and raised in Long Island, N.Y, Goodwin earned degrees from Colby College and Harvard University, where she was a Woodrow Wilson Fellow. She later taught government, including a course on the American presidency, at Harvard. Goodwin served as an assistant to President Lyndon Johnson during his last year in the White House and aided him in preparing his memoirs.

The recipient of many honors, Goodwin is winner of the National Endowment for the Humanities’ Charles Frankel Prize and Sara Josepha Hale Award, a distinguished literary prize.

Goodwin is married to writer Richard Goodwin, who worked in the White House under both Kennedy and Johnson. Mr. Goodwin’s experience as the investigator who uncovered the quiz show scandals of the 1950s was captured in the Academy Award-nominated movie “Quiz Show,” directed by Robert Redford. The Goodwins have three sons.

The Academic Awards Banquet will feature musical entertainment by the Oklahoma Summer Arts Institute Orchestra. The event will also be broadcast on OETA Channels 13 and 11 at 8 p.m. May 24. The Foundation for Excellence is a statewide nonprofit organization that recognizes and encourages academic excellence in Oklahoma’s public schools.

For more information, visit the Oklahoma Foundation for Excellence Web site at www.ofe.org or call (405) 236-0006.