Thursday, 12/06/2007 Print Version |
Governor, First Lady Induct Legends into California Hall of Fame
It is essential that I acknowledge the tremendous leadership of the California Museum without which this wonderful California institution would not exist. Secretary of State Debra Bowen, Board Chair Maurine Jones, she is here with her husband, former Secretary of State Bill Jones.
All of my fellow board members, and a special recognition to John O'Connor, Claudia French and the entire museum staff who worked very hard all year to put this ceremony, exhibit and year-round education effort together.
I would like to recognize our newest visionaries and presenting sponsors. Accenture represented here tonight by Jens Egerland, Managing Director for Accenture's California Public Service Practice; Chevron Corporation represented by Peter Robertson, Vice Chairman; and Wachovia Corporation represented by Howard Haley, Executive Vice President, Commercial Banking Executive for the Western Region. The generosity of these three corporate leaders makes the California Hall of Fame and our year-round education operation possible. Jens, Peter and Howard, you have really stepped up in such a significant way. Thank you.
I would also like to acknowledge the ongoing year-round support of our Founder Circle Donors. Your commitment is critical and is helping to build this premier California cultural institution, and without it, it could not be done. Thank you.
A special thanks to our friends at Comcast, Karen Monroe and Gilbert Martinez, for all their support. They are our partners in multimedia. Alan Irvine and John Cook from Scott's Seafood, thank you for an extremely generous donation of the catering tonight. I'm sure we're all going to enjoy that after the ceremony.
And finally, I would like to thank and introduce to you a woman whose energy knows no bounds, whose creative ideas test all the limits and whose passion for California and this museum is endless. I present to you our friend, Honorary Chair of the California Museum and the First Lady of State of California, Maria Shriver.
MARIA SHRIVER: Thank you all so much. Thank you all so much for being here. Pat, thank you so much for your incredible leadership, and I could repeat all the thank-yous to everybody you mentioned because tonight really is such a collaborative effort and so many people are involved in making this happen. And it's bigger than last year, and it's going to get even bigger with all of your support, so thank you for your leadership, and thank you to all of you for being here.
Here at this museum we have a motto and it says, "Only in California." Because it's true. Only in California could you assemble these extraordinary individuals who are being honored here tonight. No other state has them; no other state can even come close. California, the State of California, the ideas here, that's what all of these individuals have in common. These dreamers, these trailblazers, these extraordinary pioneers.
Ladies and Gentlemen, I introduce to you the 2007 California Hall of Fame inductees:
- Willie Mays
- John Wayne represented by his son, Patrick Wayne
- Jonas Salk represented by his son, Dr. Peter Salk
- The legendary Rita Moreno
- The incredible Tiger Woods
- The genius Steve Jobs
- John Steinbeck represented by his son, Thomas Miles Steinbeck
- Milton Berle, Mr. Television, represented by his wife, Lorna Berle
- Governor and Supreme Court Justice Earl Warren represented by his son, Bob Warren
- The incomparable Jackie Robinson represented by his wife, Rachel Robinson
- Robert Mondavi accompanied by his wife, Margrit Mondavi
Ladies and Gentlemen, the 2007 California Hall of Fame winners.
- And Ansel Adams, I'm sorry, represented by his son.
There you have them all here for the first time. Please sit down. California is where all of these incredible individuals got a glimpse of their own daring. It is here where they risked failing and it is here where they tried. And because they were willing to dare and they were willing to take risk, they all made history. They made our history. They changed their own world and they changed ours. I want to thank each and every one of them for taking the time out of what are incredibly busy schedules to be here tonight. You honor us by allowing us to honor you. Thank you so much.
All of their individual stories will be on permanent display for this entire year here at the museum, and I think their stories will spark the imagination of all who come here from all over the world. Their journeys and their accomplishments will teach visitors, especially the thousands and thousands of young kids who come here from all over. And they come to this museum to learn about California, to learn about the history, and they will learn about what is possible by learning about the extraordinary stories of these individuals. And I hope that they will learn that it's not about the school you went to, it's not about the family you were born into or the heritage you inherited, it's all about your talent, your vision, your perseverance. That's what all of these people have in common.
You know, one of my favorite quotes, and I've said it here before and I say it all the time at home to my children and to my husband, and it goes like this: Well-behaved women never make history.
Well, let me say tonight that well-behaved, by-the-book traditional rule-followers will never make it into the California Hall of Fame. This Hall of Fame is filled with people who faced extraordinary adversity in their lives, who were told over and over again, no, you can't do that, you can't dream that, you're crazy, it's not possible, you don't have what it takes. But not one person up here listened to what other people said. They all went out and achieved well beyond everybody's expectations.
All of these individuals are out-of-the-box thinkers and doers and they embody the very spirit of California. And that's the award that they will be receiving tonight which you see up here behind you. It's called the Spirit of California, and it was designed exclusively for the Hall of Fame and this museum by our great friend, and the legendary sculptor, California sculptor, Robert Graham. And I like it because it's a woman, but it's a Californian, and she's looking over her shoulder and she's dreaming, and she's imaging what's possible. And I know that every single person here and their parents looked over their shoulder and dreamed themselves, and that's what got them here. So I particularly love this award, and I hope that everybody who receives it tonight will look at it over and over again and remind themselves about the possibilities of dreams and that they are possible here in the State of California.
Preparing for this evening I was reading a book of California poetry given to me when I first became First Lady by State Librarian Kevin Starr, and I'm a big fan of poetry. And I read through it, and I came across a poem written by John Rollin Ridge, who is a Native American here in California, and I thought it perfectly described the individuals that we're honoring here tonight. And it is a poem, it's called "From California" and I wanted to read it to you, and it goes like this:
And shall we
view these miracles and more
Which mind and muscle never wrought before,
Without remembrance in these latter years,
Of those brave men, those hardy Pioneers,
Who led the way for Science, Art, and Law,
'Mid dangers their successors never saw,
And countless hardships that they never knew?
The famed and unfamed heroes tried and true,
Who crowded into months or days the deeds
Of years, and of young empire sowed the seeds?
Amid the mass there here and there appears
Some reverend head, majestic as a seers --
These are the Pioneers of Pioneers
It is a privilege to be on this stage with these pioneers of pioneers. We honor them tonight for their courage, their brilliance, their perseverance and their vision and, of course, their extraordinary achievements.
And now it's my pleasure to introduce a man who has never seen a hurdle he didn't try to overcome, who has never met a challenge he didn't dare to rise to meet, and who believes that California is the best place on earth to make your dreams come true, and who never listened to people telling him no. I tried, and it didn't work.
Ladies and Gentlemen, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.
GOVERNOR ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER: Thank you very much, and thank you, Maria, for the wonderful introduction. It is true, she has tried.
Anyway, it is great to be here today, and I want to thank all of you for being here, and I want to especially thank Governor Davis and Sharon Davis for being here, Lieutenant Governor Garamendi and Patti, Attorney General Brown and State Treasurer Bill Lockyer, Secretary of State Bowen and her husband, Mark Nechodom, and State Controller, John Chiang, Commissioner Steve Poizner, Senator Don Perata, thank you for being here and Speaker Fabia Nuñez and his wonderful wife, Maria Robles, thank you for being here. Secretary George Shultz, my buddy, and Charlotte Shultz, and then Mayor of San Francisco, Gavin Newsom. Thank you all. Give them a big hand for being here today.
And first of all, of course, I want to thank Maria for the remarkable work that she has been doing for the museum and also for the Hall of Fame, because she really has been the driving force behind all of this. She had a vision of this and she turned it into reality. So let's give her a big hand for the great work that she has been doing.
And also a big hand for the museum staff under the leadership of Claudia French and also the First Lady's office, her entire staff. Thank you very much for all the help you have given.
The Hall of Fame celebrates California's drive to excel and the notion that anything in life is possible. Or like my old friend Milton Berle would say, you know, he would joke many times about that: If opportunity doesn't knock, build a door. Milton is one of the inductees tonight, and he has been a long-time friend. I'm very happy about that. He has been a great entertainer for more than 80 years, and so it is great to have him be part of these great legends here today. He is probably right now up there in heaven performing twice every night and having a good time.
The men and women that we are honoring here are all risk-takers, pioneers whose commitment to excellence and breaking barriers has changed the world, whether it is in business, in arts, or in entertainment, medicine, sports or even in politics, yes. So many of the American trailblazers made their mark right here in California, a place I always call the golden dream by the sea. The reason why I call it that is because California without any doubt is the greatest place in the world, but it also makes dreams become a reality, and there is no one that knows this better than I do. Because I was a kid in Austria, and I had big dreams, which is to come to America and to be successful. And because I came to California, I have made all my dreams become a reality and much more. So I wouldn't be standing here today if it wouldn't be for California. I think that a lot of other people feel exactly the same way. This is the greatest place in the world.
And look at these amazing people who are being inducted here tonight. It gives me goose bumps just to think about being in the same place with these great, great legends here -- Willie Mays and Robert Mondavi, Steve Jobs, Tiger Woods, Rita Moreno and so on. I mean, this is absolutely fantastic. And then we have the extraordinary inductees that no longer are with us but will live forever in our hearts and in our memories like Earl Warren, John Wayne, Jackie Robinson, Jonas Salk and Ansel Adams, John Steinbeck and Milton Berle.
The impact these giants have had is absolutely mind-boggling, not only in California and in America but all over the world. Now, I have tremendous admiration for all of this year's inductees, and I would like to talk about each and every one of them in detail, but the program is a little different where I only do the first one, and then others do others, and then my wife does the last one. So I'm going to follow my wife's instructions on this one here.
So the first one is a former governor, Earl Warren. He has been a special inspiration to me, and you will understand very quickly why. The California born son of Scandinavian immigrants, Earl Warren's life serves as a monument to the American values of decency, justice and integrity and public service. He was one of the most influential Chief Justices in American history, and he served an unprecedented three times as California Governor. Chief Justice Warren was a proud Republican, but more than anything, he was a great servant to his people, not to his party. He was a visionary and a builder, and he was so popular that in fact in 1946 he was nominated for governor by both the Democratic and the Republican party.
I think it's a nice challenge. It has never happened again, but I think it is something to look forward to.
He used his powers to embrace and to uplift all of the people. His Supreme Court, the Warren Court, gave life to the Jeffersonian ideal that all men are created equal. And the Warren Court did some spectacular things. It ruled school segregation unconstitutional. It affirmed the principle of one man, one vote. And it gave all Americans, regardless of race, creed or color, the right to serve on juries. And it gave all suspects in custody fundamental rights to remain silent and to have legal representation. And in our darkest hour, the new President Lyndon Johnson turned to Earl Warren for reassurance. Johnson knew that Earl Warren was the right man, that he was the only man to chair the commission investigating President Kennedy's assassination.
So the State of California honors Earl Warren, our 30th Governor of the great state of California, the 14th Chief Justice of the United States, for his life of dignity and accomplishment.
And to receive this award is Bob Warren, the son of Earl Warren. So let's bring him out here and present him our Spirit of California medal.
BOB WARREN: In novels and short stories, in fiction, in journalism from the 1920s through the 1960s, John Steinbeck composed unforgettable literary portraits of forgotten America. He was the son of comfort in Salinas, a student of culture at Stanford and the Poet Laureate of the dispossessed. John Steinbeck's work spoke for the men and women society didn't hear. Of Mice and Men told the tale of George and Lennie, itinerant laborers working the San Joaquin Valley sustained and broken by simple dreams.
The Grapes of Wrath which won the Pulitzer Prize is the epic journey of the Jodes from the dust bowl of Oklahoma to depression California. From land ruined by drought to migrant labor camps scarred by cruelty. From a place where hope was challenged to a place where dreams were never defeated.
Always, John Steinbeck's work was about the intrinsic value and dignity of the individual. From Tortilla Flat to Cannery Row and East of Eden, they were literary achievements so successful in touching the heart, the soul and the mind that John Steinbeck was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962.
The State of California honors John Steinbeck, his native son, the modest literary giant who told simple stories with beauty and grace.
>> Accepting for John Steinbeck is Thomas Miles Steinbeck.
THOMAS MILES STEINBECK: This next one gives me great personal pleasure because Ansel Adams was a great hero of mine and may have changed my life to a great degree. In 1906 Ansel Adams experienced the fearsome wonder and power of nature when he survived the San Francisco earthquake. That would have made him the same age of my father. He was born in 1902. Ten years later he made is first trip to Yosemite and marveled at nature's awesome beauty and immutable grace. He spent the better part of the next seven decades recording that extraordinary beauty and grace in photographs that would inspire generations for centuries to come. And through his work with he Sierra Club, which Adams joined as a teenager and came to lead as a director, he made preserving our natural wonders and resources a very personal quest. And doing the most small part to his tireless artistic efforts, natural wonders like El Capitan and Half Dome, the great giant redwoods and the Grand Titans, Adams' haunting images will last with us forever. A master of the science of photography, Ansel Adams created in his thunderous interplay of shadow and light those works that inspire and generate environmental activism all over the world to this day.It is the work he described quite simply as "an austere and blazing poetry of the real." What an understatement.
The State of California honors Ansel Adams, the trailblazing visual poet who carefully coaxed his Deardorf camera to record those moments of nature and of landscape that will live with us forever.
>>: Accepting for Ansel Adams is his son, Dr. Michael Adams.
MICHAEL ADAMS: John Wayne. If 20th Century America had a face, it was the face of John Wayne. If 20th Century America had a voice, it was the voice of John Wayne. If 20th Century America had a walk, it was the bull-legged shamble of John Wayne.
Whether he was astride a horse, defending the Alamo, storming the beaches of Hirojima, John Wayne was the quintessential American movie star for nearly 50 years. From his first picture in 1926 to his last in 1976, he was an American classic, and his story was classically American.
His Hollywood career wasn't much more than a happy accident. He was a kid from Glendale, a USC football player named Marion Morrison, just a kid working a menial summer job at Fox Film Studios where he was discovered by a director named John Ford. He was tall and lanky and easy to know, and it seemed the camera might like him. Even then, there was a hard crust around a decent core, just like so many of the characters he would come to play like the Ringo Kid in Stagecoach, or Ethan Edwards in The Searchers, like Thomas Dunson in Red River or Rooster Cogburn in the Oscar-winning True Grit.
The kid's name was changed to John Wayne. More than 170 films followed and reel by reel a story of America was told. It was a story of the Old West, old values and rewards, one old-fashioned way -- through grit, determination, hard work. It was a story of America told through the prism of John Wayne's imagination and beliefs. And while his politics didn't please everyone, his appeal on screen was universal.
Over the decades, Wayne made films with dozens of directors, but often the best work was done with John Ford. Stagecoach and The Searchers, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, and The Quiet Man, Fort Apache and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. All of them American classics, just like the man whose name was above the title.
The State of California honors John Wayne whose work is a lasting, treasured and monumental gift to the country he so dearly loved.
>>: Accepting for John Wayne is his son, Patrick Wayne.
PATRICK WAYNE: Throughout history man has gathered each night around lights and sound -- the campfire, the hearth, the stove. Then came the radio. Shortly thereafter came the television which Milton Berle made irresistible. Milton Berle embodied the history of 20th Century American show business.
He was born Milton Berlinger in New York City in 1908. At the age of six he was working regularly in silent films with such stars as Charlie Chaplain, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks. When he was twelve, he made his debut on Broadway. And when he starred in the Ziegfeld Follies, he was the first performer ever to have his name above the title on the marquee. He went on to tour in vaudeville and after the advent of sound, he starred in talkies. But radio made Berle a household name, a fixture in every living room. And television made him an iconic figure whose work will be remembered as long as sound and pictures are transmitted through thin air.
In 1948 NBC moved Berle's Texaco Star Theater from radio to television. Its visual slap-stick vaudeville style was perfect for the new medium. And live from Hollywood, Berle became the biggest star in the audacious new firmament. When Berle went on the air, a million American homes had television. Within months the number doubled, and then it doubled again. And it continued to double until the television set became as essential to the American home as Edison's light bulb, thanks to a foundation constructed by the wit and talent of Milton Berle. Everyone had to watch Uncle Milty Tuesday nights. Everyone had to talk about what they saw the next morning. Movie ticket sales declined Tuesday nights, restaurants closed Tuesday nights, and Uncle Milty did an 80 share. Shows don't do 80 shares any longer. But Milton Berle's legacy, the television water cooler hit endures.
The State of California honors Milton Berle, television's first great star.
>>: Accepting for Milton Berle is his widow, Lorna Berle.
LORNA BERLE: They're playing his song. Milt was in the room, I can feel it; it's palpable.
There was a time when summer was a season of fear for many American parents. The season when thousands upon thousands of children became infected with a crippling polio virus. Those were the summers and the seasons before Jonas Salk.
All the seasons of Jonas Salk were seasons of accomplishment. He was 15 when he started at City College of New York. He was just 24 when he graduated from New York University College of Medicine. And he was just 40 when he ended those summers of fear forever.
Motivated, he said, more by love of humanity than of science. Salk devoted his abundant energies, expertise and intellect to medical research. In 1947 he was appointed director of the Virus Research Laboratory of the University of Pittsburgh. By 1955 he had developed and fully tested a vaccine for polio. But it was in 1916 a polio outbreak in the United States left 6,000 dead and 27,000 paralyzed. In the early 1950s more than 50,000 new cases were reported each year with between 5 and 10% of them resulting in death. By 1957 the number of new reported cases had dropped to 5,000 annually. By 1991 the disease had been completely eradicated from the United States.
But Jonas Salk never sought to profit from his discovery. He refused to patent the vaccine because he wished to see it disseminated as widely as possible. What Salk did instead was continue to devote his genius, skill and fame to medical research.
In 1959 he moved to La Jolla and established the Salk Institute for Biological Studies. There he spent his final four decades conducting research on cancer and autoimmune disease while continuing vaccine research related to both polio and AIDS.
The State of California honors Jonas Salk, medicine's modern miracle worker.
>>: Accepting for Jonas Salk is his son, Dr. Peter Salk.
PETER SALK: It's a special honor for me to introduce this award to one of my childhood heroes. Jackie Robinson's grandfather was born into slavery. Jackie Robinson's grandchildren were born into a more equitable world he made possible.
Jackie Robinson was born in segregated Georgia in 1919. He was raised and educated in an imperfect, but less racially divided place called California. After distinguishing himself at Pasadena's John Muir High School, Robinson went on to Pasadena City College and UCLA where he became the first athlete to win four varsity letters in football, basketball, baseball and track.
Then he went out into a world that cared more about the color of his skin than the content of his character or the caliber of his achievements. He served in a segregated army unit in World War II and came marching home in 1945 to find work playing baseball for the Kansas City Monarchs of the Negro League.
Baseball in 1945 was as segregated as the Georgia of Jackie Robinson's birth. But then Branch Rickey, the president of the Brooklyn Dodgers, invited Jackie Robinson to change all that. On April 15, 1947, Jackie Robinson became the first African-American to play in a big league baseball game, and the hundred-year march from slavery to equality picked up speed.
One color line had been broken and other barriers would inevitably crumble. Symbolism was reality; sports was real life. Jackie suffered the abuse and degradation, but after him, Black children went to Central High School in Little Rock, and James Meredith enrolled in the University of Mississippi. After Jackie, Martin Luther King stood on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and Denzel Washington and Morgan Freeman and Halle Berry stood on the stage holding Oscars at the Academy Awards.
The State of California honors Jackie Robinson for lighting the torch of freedom and making it possible for all men and women to reach out of the darkness and grasp their dreams.
>>: Accepting for Jackie Robinson is his widow, Rachel.
RACHEL ROBINSON: Some people dream about the future; others speculate about the future. Steve Jobs created the future. Did you know that, Steve?
A college drop-out from Cupertino, a visionary without credentials or portfolio, 21-year-old Steve Jobs saw the design for a homemade computer in his friend, Steve Wozniak's house and envisioned a brave new world of possibility. Wozniak had designed a computer for his own use and Jobs said they should build it for the world. Working out of Jobs' garage, on April 1st, 1976, they created a company they called Apple.
Over the next three decades, the ideas got bigger while the products in the world got smaller. Every desk top became an international connection, every pocket a dance hall juke box, every palm a global communications center, every invention begat a re-invention. First Steve Jobs gave us a wired world, now he's creating a wireless universe.
Apple was followed by Nex, then there was Pixar which turned the two-dimensional cartoon into a three-dimensional art form so real it demands that you reach out and touch it. Steve Jobs gave us the means and created the end.
The State of California honors Steve Jobs who saw the future and invited us all to share with him the journey there.
STEVE JOBS: Robert Mondavi's life is the quintessential American success story. It stretches from Main Street in a small town in Minnesota to a valley in California, back to Wall Street, across the Atlantic Ocean and around the world.Mondavi was born to Italian immigrant parents in that small Minnesota town in 1913. As a boy, he moved with his family to Lodi, California where is father started a successful fruit packing business. Robert went off to study at Stanford University, and when he graduated he came back to join the family business which now included the Charles Krug Winery in the Napa Valley. Together the Mondavis worked to rebuild a business that had almost been destroyed by prohibition and the depression. But Robert dreamed of a different kind of California winery, one that could produce great wines, wines that would rival those produced in France and Italy, wines that would be accepted and enjoyed around the world.
In 1966 in Oakville in the Napa Valley he founded the Robert Mondavi Winery. He pioneered many fine wine-making techniques in California, including cold fermentation, stainless steel tanks and use of French oak barrels. He introduced blind taste tests that proved that Napa Valley wines could withstand any scrutiny and deserved to be considered and consumed with the best in the world. Others followed Mondavi's lead, and today, California's wine industry is the fourth largest in the world, behind only France, Italy and Spain. It employs more than 300,000 workers, generates more than $50 billion in economic value for the state and ships more than 185 million cases a year, including 43 million to 165 countries around the world.
The State of California honors Robert Mondavi for his vision, his leadership and creating a standard of excellence respected around the world.
>>: To present our next inductee, Margrit Mondavi.
MARGRIT MONDAVI: What a nice tribute to my husband of 27 years, happy wonderful years.
And now I've really got somebody wonderful to announce, Rita Moreno. Rita Moreno can sing; she has a Grammy to prove that. Rita Moreno can act; she has an Oscar and two Emmies in case there are any doubts. Rita Moreno can dance; she has a Tony which should answer any questions about that.
Nine individuals have accomplished that show business grand slam. Only one is a Latina who had to battle racism and sexism. Only one is a Latina who had to defy stereotype and tolerate intolerance. Only one Rita Moreno of Berkeley, California.
She was born Rosita Dolores Alverio in Humacao, Puerto Rico in 1931, and she wants me to tell that next week she's going to be 76. Look at that lady.
When she was five she moved to New York with her mother like all immigrants, a true believer in the American dream. By the time she was eleven, she was dubbing American films into Spanish. At 13 she made her Broadway debut in a long-forgotten production entitled Skydirft. By 1949 she was in California, a contract player at MGM. The roles weren't always great, and sometimes they were demeaning. On "Father Knows Best" she played an exchange student from India. Oh, well. You have to start someplace.
But there were plentiful occasions the productions were memorable. Rita Moreno had parts in both Singing in the Rain and The King and I. Singing in the Rain, remember that? She persevered, and in 1961 she got her break, winning the pivotal role of Anita in the film version of West Side Story.
For Moreno it was the role of a lifetime, perhaps the role of her lifetime. And she played the proud, resolute, defiant Puerto Rican character with Oscar-winning resonance. After Anita there was no turning back. There would be no more Indian exchange students, no more Latin spitfires or mindless sexpots. Dignity would no longer be traded for meaningless commercial opportunities. But there would be that Grammy, that Tony and those two Emmies.
After Anita there would be opportunity for Salma Hayek and Penélope Cruz, for Jennifer Lopez and America Ferrera and Michelle Rodriguez. After Anita the progress would come slowly, frustratingly, but it would surely come.
The State of California honors Rita Moreno who proves that grace, talent and justice can never be denied. Congratulations.
RITA MORENO: Whose idea was that picture? Margrit, that was really, really beautifully read and with passion and I thank you.
Potential squandered is the oldest, saddest story in sports. Potential achieved is perhaps the most rewarding and appreciated. Potential exceeded is the rare and beautiful story of Tiger Woods' life.
Born is Cypress in 1975, schooled in the game by his late father Earl on the public golf links of Southern California, educated at Stanford, Tiger Woods is the embodiment of modern California. Tiger Woods is part Thai, part Chinese, part African-American, part Native American, part Dutch, married to a Swede. The (IA) exception, Puerto Rican. Oh, well. And a thoroughly American success story.
A golf prodigy almost from the first moment he picked up a club at the age of two -- look at that adorable child -- Woods first displayed his potential on national television with Mike Douglas and Bob Hope in 1978. In 1991 Woods became the youngest U.S. Junior Amateur Champion, and he successfully defended the title twice until in 1994 when he became history's youngest U.S. Amateur Champion, another title successfully defended twice.
In August 1996 Tiger turned pro and turned a nice sedate, country club game into a national obsession. Boys and girls everywhere from Stockton to South Central, from Lompoc to La Jolla, from Oakland or Orange suddenly saw the possibilities in the fame of golf, including my 7-year-old grandson Justin. They could all be Tiger Woods. He looks like them. He talks like them. He comes from the same place they come from. Tiger Woods is the shared experience of all of us, and he is a champion. Perhaps the greatest champion.
He is the youngest player to achieve the career grand slam. He is the youngest to win 50 professional tournaments. He is the youngest Master's champion ever, the only one to told all four major championships at the same time, the first champion of African or Asian heritage and, lest we forget, the highest-paid athlete in the world.
The State of California honors Tiger Woods. I should say!
I just want to know something. Do you have a dollar?
TIGER WOODS: Wow. Well, the next inductee is a person that I've looked up to and my father, as well. Jackie Robinson changed the face of baseball, but Willie Mays changed the way the game was played. He was speed and power, grace and strength, guile and athleticism, excitement and style and cool in all one package.
If a base needed to be stolen, Willie stole it. If a homerun needed to be hit, Willie hit it. If the ball needed to be caught, Willie caught it -- over shoulder, diving head-long, in a (IA) basket, by any means necessary, he made the catch. He charged the ball. He picked it up with his bare hand and threw a runner out at home if that's what the situation demanded. There was nothing in the game of baseball that eluded Willie Mays. He was the master of all the diamonds' facets.
Willie Mays came up hard in the depression in Alabama, but always found joy in sports. He starred in football, basketball and baseball in high school. But in 1947, the year Robinson broke the color line, Willie was just 16. He signed a professional contract and went to work for the Negro League's Birmingham Black Barons. Three years later he was signed by the New York Giants, and the year after that he was in the big leagues helping the Giants to the National League Pennant and winning Rookie of the Year.
His first hit after a fabulous 0 and 12 start was a homerun off a future Hall of Famer Warren Spahn. Over the next 22 years he would hit 660 homeruns, amass 3283 hits, bat 302, score more than 2000 runs and drive in more than 1900 and come to be considered the greatest all-round player in the history of the game.
And in 1958 when the Giants moved to San Francisco and the Dodgers moved to Los Angeles, it was the presence and the panache of Willie Mays that made California thoroughly irrefutable big league. Willie Mays became the heart of sports in San Francisco. He made the city his home, and the heart still beats as strongly today as it did 50 years ago.
The State of California honors Willie Mays for always playing baseball with joys' irrepressible abandonment and teaching us how to share in his joy.
MARIA SHRIVER: Our last -- I'm going to read the last citation, because it is in honor of Elizabeth Taylor who had to unfortunately cancel this afternoon because she had fallen and wasn't feeling well, but who is going to come up to get her medal from you personally, Arnold, as soon as she's feeling better. But I thought it was appropriate to read her citation which she wanted me to do, so I will to her pictures.
Born in London to American parents in 1932, Elizabeth Taylor was from the very beginning a citizen of the world. And it wasn't long before the world noticed. Her family resettled in Los Angeles after the outbreak of World War II, and by the time she was nine she had her first motion picture contract. At twelve with the release of National Velvet she became a star. When she was 26 she won her first Oscar for Butterfield 8. Six years later she won another for Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf.
With her incredible beauty, her luminescent eyes, her regal bearing and her timeless presence, Elizabeth Taylor was the last of a breed, the last of the great movie stars produced by the old Hollywood studio system and she remains one of a kind. A movie star, an artist, an icon, a businesswoman, a celebrity and a humanitarian. And the world still takes notice. Queen Elizabeth named her Dame Commander of the British Empire. President Clinton honored her with a Presidential Citizen's Medal and France bestowed upon her the prestigious Legion d'Honneur.
But perhaps none of it has mattered as much as her leadership in the fight against AIDS. When it wasn't convenient or popular, Elizabeth Taylor embarked on her crusade against this incredible disease. She helped found AMFAR, the American Foundation for Aids Research. And when it seemed that that might not be enough, she established the Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation. Her work has raised tens of millions of dollars and it has saved countless lives.
The State of California honors Elizabeth Taylor, a citizen of the world who California is proud to call its own.
And Ladies and Gentlemen, I introduce to you, I'd like to ask all the 2007 honorees to take a bow. This is the class of 2007, and I want to say from a personal point of view, it is an extraordinary group of individuals. Those whose parents are no longer here, I honor you for the way you have honored their legacy for being here, and for all of you who continue to work and make us all proud. You will honor us so much in the years to come. I am so honored that you took the time from what I know is extraordinarily busy careers to be here this evening. And I know you did it because you believe in this state and you believe that the young people who come here have the possibilities to dream like you did.
So I want to thank you. Ladies and Gentlemen, the Hall of Fame inductees.
(Applause)
