Proposing a unique prize for Zelenskyy
In 1977, the Rev. John P. Adams, was awarded the distinguished graduate award voted by his classmates on the 25th anniversary of their graduation from Yale Divinity School. It was an intangible award. No money. No prize. No plaque. No prestige.
Adams took pride in showing me after the ceremony a folded sheet of paper he took from his pocket. On it was typed these simple words:
“Distinguished Service Award 1977
John P. Adams Presented by the Class of 1952.”
I was a divinity student at Yale at the time and Adams was my mentor.
He was a big shot. His office was in the United Methodist Building across from the the Supreme Court building in Washington, D.C. He was director of the office of Law, Justice and Community Affairs of the United Methodist Church.
He had negotiated as a trusted liaison between opposing forces in civil rights causes from the Kent State shootings in 1970 to the occupation of the site of the Wounded Knee massacre.
In 1977, when Adams showed me that piece of paper with those few typed words on it, he gave me a long look in the eyes as I read it.
He wanted me to understand that the award was totally without financial value or prestige or any bragging rights at all. You couldn't even say, “That's a beautiful plaque.”
He wanted me to realize that he and I were involved in a profession whose rewards could not be quantified in worldly terms.
In memory of that lesson he sought to teach me, I propose that in good Yale Divinity School tradition, a special award to honor Volodymyr Zelenskyy should be created.
It should be for Zelenskyy's inspiring oratory which roused the world to oppose a tyrant just as Winston Churchill roused the world to oppose the tyranny of Hitler in the 1940s.
Yale Divinity School can call it “The Churchill Oratory Award” and ensure that it will have no “worldly” value by producing it in their tradition of a simple piece of typed paper.
That sheet of paper will have a special value for President Zelenskyy not only because Yale Divinity School has been teaching public speaking since 1822 but because it decries anti-Semitism. President Zelenskyy is Jewish and Churchill, the great orator, was a longtime loyal friend of the Jewish people at every step of their modern journey to nationhood
The Churchill Oratory Award should not only be a simple piece of paper, but it should only be awarded one time and that in 2022. (Churchills and Zelenskyys don't pop up in history that often.)
But in a larger sense, Volodymyr Zelenskyy already cherishes intangible prizes: freedom, autonomy, peace — and life itself.