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January 5, 2010

Four honored with humanitarian awards

LAKE PLACID — Author Russell Banks, Plattsburgh State professor J.W. Wiley and folk duo Magpie were honored at the John Brown Coming Home commemoration, held recently at St. Eustace Episcopal Church in Lake Placid.

Banks received the first Adirondack Humanitarian Award.

Magpie, which consists of Greg Artzner and Terry Leonino, and Wiley were awarded the John Brown Humanitarian Award.

The awards were given to honor people within the community "who have helped foster a more compassionate society by employing altruistic virtue, innate vision and a wish to promote tolerance in others."

Alice Keesey Mecoy, the great-great-great-granddaughter of abolitionist John Brown, presented the awards to Leonino and Artzner, who live near Albany.

Mecoy said the two use their music as a tool for social activism in fighting for human rights, peace and environmentalism.

Banks, a longtime resident of Keene and Saratoga, was given his award by Bob Bullock, president of the New York State Archives Partnership Trust. Bullock spoke of Banks's accomplishments in promoting a greater understanding of the human condition through his writing.

Pulitzer Prize-winning author William Kennedy also praised Banks for his many accomplishments as an author, teacher and founder and president of Cities of Refuge North America.

Wiley's award was presented by Press-Republican Editor Bob Grady, who said the director of Plattsburgh State's Center for Diversity, Pluralism and Inclusion has done more to promote understanding and appreciation of people's differences in the region than anyone he knew of, as teacher, lecturer and mediator.

Grady spoke of the need for diversity hereabouts, in that the North Country is about 94-percent white and said Wiley has enhanced that diversity with his teaching, both at the university and throughout the community. Wiley has always emphasized that discrimination applies to far more than skin hue, Grady said, citing age, disability and gender as particular areas of concern.

The presentations of the awards were part of the weeklong activities in connection with the 150th anniversary of the hanging in Charlestown, Va., of white anti-slavery activist John Brown, who lived and was buried on his farm outside of Lake Placid.

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