That’s President Obama giving the Presidential Medal Of Freedom to Tom Hanks, Bruce Springsteen, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Bill and Melinda Gates, Ellen DeGeneres, Lorne Michaels, Robert Redford, Diana Ross, Robert DeNiro, Frank Gehry, Maya Lin, Cicely Tyson, Vin Scully, Michael Jordan, and others.
What makes this special to me is not the famous people I just named, who are being lauded yet again for their careers in entertainment or sports or philanthropy. It’s the people like Margaret Hamilton — not the actress who played The Wicked Witch in “The Wizard Of Oz,” but the groundbreaking computer scientist who developed onboard flight software for the Apollo 11 moon mission and many others. She represents the people you’ve never heard of, the unsung heroes who did things no one had done before, who set new paths that led to our future. You can see in their eyes how special this recognition is, even if they’re not the celebrities who earn the most applause (and money).