The Joseph R. Biden Lifetime Achievement Award and Presidential Volunteer Service Award Ceremony was held at Nineteenth Street Baptist Church in northwest D.C. on Friday.
Among the several honorees were distinguished honorees: Council member Janeese Lewis George (D-Ward 4); Nicholas M. Perkins, president and CEO of Perkins Management Services and Fuddruckers; B. Doyle Mitchell Jr., president and CEO of Industrial Bank, Washington, D.C.; Reta Jo Lewis, Esq, president and chair of the Export-Import Bank of the United States, Washington, D.C., and motivational and inspirational hall of fame speaker Dr. Willie Jolly.
“Presidential History Maker” honorees included posthumous awards for Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, Cecelia “Cissy Marshall and the Honorable Floyd B. McKissick Sr., and honors to Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.), and the Honorable Eric Holder. Other history-makers include Frank Smith, executive director of the African American Civil War Memorial and Norma June Davis of the Atlanta Student Movement. The Rev. Darryl D. Roberts, Nineteenth Street Baptist Church’s pastor, was another “Presidential History Maker” and two other church members, A.J. Ali and Marcus Johnson, were also recognized.
Dr. Jasmin “Jazz” Sculark, received the President’s Lifetime Achievement Award.
The awards included presentations from Jackie Reyes-Yanes, director of the Mayor’s Office of Community Affairs; Rep. Troy Carter (D-Louisiana); the National Faith Director for the Department of Health and Human Services the Rev. Dr. Que English; Roger Murry of Richard Wright Public Charter School for Journalism and Media Arts; and Dr. Beverly Kee, executive director of Premiere Coalition Partners Association.
To add to the occasion were musical sections from the likes of saxophonist Brian Lenair and vibrant gospel tunes from Dr. Patrick Lundy and The Ministers of Music.