The PNC Financial Services Group, Inc. (NYSE: PNC) announces the winners of the 2004 Common Wealth Awards of Distinguished Service. This year marks the 25th anniversary of these prestigious awards, which are presented to individuals who have enriched and improved the world through their exceptional lifetime achievements.
The Common Wealth Awards were first presented in 1979 to reward and encourage the best of human performance. In their 25-year history, the awards have conferred nearly $3.5 million in prize money to 148 honorees of international renown.
PNC Bank, Delaware, trustee for the awards since their inception, will present a shared prize of $250,000 to this year's honorees at a gala ceremony at the Hotel du Pont in Wilmington on April 24.
Winners of the 2004 Common Wealth Awards are:
* Christopher Reeve, renowned actor and America's leading advocate for people with paralysis and other disabilities, for Public Service;
* Meryl Streep, legendary actress and Hollywood icon, considered the greatest film star of her generation, for Dramatic Arts;
* Stanley Prusiner, M.D., pioneering researcher and Nobel-prize winner who discovered the deadly protein linked to mad cow disease, for Science and Invention;
* Isabel Allende, the most widely read and renowned Latin American woman writer in the world, for Literature;
* Andrea Mitchell, leading broadcast journalist and chief foreign affairs correspondent for NBC News, for Mass Communications.
"Today, the Common Wealth Awards enter their 25th year of honoring some of the most gifted and intriguing people of modern times," said Connie Bond Stuart, president and chief executive officer of PNC Bank, Delaware. "PNC has been privileged to be part of this distinguished tradition from the beginning through our roles as trustee and administrator of the awards. PNC is proud to celebrate the silver jubilee of the Common Wealth Awards by saluting yet another group of accomplished women and men," Stuart said. "The 2004 honorees are giants in the arts, science and public service. Their enduring contributions have touched all of us today and stand as a legacy to future generations."
The Common Wealth Awards are funded by a trust set up by the late Ralph Hayes, an influential business executive and philanthropist. He served on the board of directors of PNC's predecessor banks from 1943 to 1965. Through his endowment, Hayes sought to recognize outstanding achievement in seven disciplines: dramatic arts, literature, science and invention, mass communications, public service, government, and sociology.
The Common Wealth roster of honorees reads like a "Who's Who" of modern history. Among the winners are 11 Nobel laureates, including the 2004 science honoree, Dr. Stanley Prusiner, human rights leader Archbishop Desmond Tutu, former statesman Henry Kissinger and author Toni Morrison. Past winners also include children's television icon, the late Fred Rogers, dance legend Mikhail Baryshnikov, primatologist Jane Goodall, former First Lady Betty Ford, media mogul Ted Turner and DuPont scientist, Stephanie Kwolek, the Delaware resident who helped invent Kevlar.
The 2004 Common Wealth honorees represent the spectrum of human endeavors and the finest of human achievement.
Christopher Reeve, 51, is a world-renowned actor and ardent advocate on behalf of people with disabilities. He wins the 2004 Common Wealth Award for Public Service. As a performer, Reeve is best known for his career-making movie role as Superman. His life took a new direction after an equestrian accident in 1995 left him a quadriplegic. Since then, Reeve has devoted himself to finding hope and healing for people living with paralysis and other disabilities. He is chairman of the Christopher Reeve Paralysis Foundation and vice chairman of the National Organization on Disabilities. Reeve's quest to advance spinal cord research has received support from Washington lawmakers and neuroscientists around the world. He is also a leading advocate for reforms in health and disability insurance and other quality of life issues affecting the disabled. Reeve continues his career as an actor and director in film and television.
Veteran movie star, Meryl Streep, 54, is a consummate actress, a Hollywood history-maker and an artistic role model for other actresses. She wins the 2004 Common Wealth Award for Dramatic Arts in recognition of her celebrated acting career. Streep is regarded as America's most accomplished film actress. Since her Hollywood debut in 1977, she has rendered some of the most memorable performances in modern films, including her Oscar-winning roles in "Kramer vs. Kramer" and "Sophie's Choice." Streep is renowned for her virtuosity and versatility as a character actress. Her standout work includes film classics such as The "French Lieutenant's Woman," "Out of Africa" and "The Bridges of Madison County." In 2002, she costarred in "The Hours" and "Adaptation," two inventive and widely acclaimed literary films. Streep's performance in Adaptation netted the actress her 13th Oscar nomination, making her Hollywood's most-Oscar nominated actor ever.
Stanley B. Prusiner, a neurologist and biologist, receives the 2004 Common Wealth Award for Science and Invention. Prusiner, 61, is internationally renowned for his discovery of prions, protein particles which he identified as the cause of brain destroying diseases in animals and humans, including the fatal mad cow disease. In the early 1980s, Prusiner showed that prions could multiply into harmful forms that trigger disease, even though they do not have the genetic material found in other infectious agents. His revolutionary new theory of infection at first was rejected by the scientific community, but has since been validated through ongoing research. Prusiner was awarded the 1997 Nobel Prize in medicine for his pioneering study of prions. More recently, his work has shown similarities between prion diseases and other dementias, such as Alzheimer's disease. Prusiner is director of the Institute of Neurodegenerative Diseases at the University of California, San Francisco.
Isabel Allende, 61, is one of the world's most celebrated and successful women writers of serious fiction. She receives the 2004 Common Wealth Award for Literature. Her award-winning literary works include "The House of the Spirits," "Of Love and Shadows," "Paula and Daughter of Fortune." Born in Peru and raised in Chile, Allende has emerged beyond the Latin American literary world to achieve international acclaim. Her stories are forged from her reservoir of family memories and the rich history, culture and myths of Chile and Latin America. Combining fantasy and realism, her works are noted for their panoramic range of time, places, people and emotions. Allende writes of love and anger, memory and nostalgia, freedom and repression, adventure and courage. As a feminist and humanitarian, she imparts her vision for a world where "gender, race, nationality or class will not define or determine people's destinies."
One of NBC News' top correspondents, Andrea Mitchell, 57, receives the 2004 Common Wealth Award for Mass Communications. A 25-year veteran of NBC News, Mitchell has been the network's chief foreign affairs correspondent since November 1994. She has reported on nuclear proliferation in India and Pakistan, normalization of relations with Vietnam, the war in Bosnia, U.S.- China relations, the Middle East peace process, terrorism, and the conflict with Iraq. Starting in 1999, Mitchell conducted a series of exclusive interviews with Cuban President Fidel Castro, culminating in a one-hour documentary, "Castro's Cuba: At the Crossroads." Mitchell has also reported for NBC News as a congressional correspondent and chief White House correspondent. Throughout the 2000 election year, she hosted MSNBC's The Mitchell Report. In 1999, she was nominated for two news Emmy awards for her outstanding reporting on the crisis in Iraq and the terrorist embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania.
The Common Wealth Trust is administered by PNC Advisors, a member of The PNC Financial Services Group and a service mark used by its subsidiaries, PNC Bank, N.A. and PNC Bank, Delaware, members FDIC. PNC Advisors provides a full range of tailored investment, trust and private banking products and services to affluent individuals and families, including full-service brokerage through J.J.B. Hilliard, W.L. Lyons, Inc. and PNC Investments, LLC, members NASD. PNC Advisors also serves as investment manager and trustee for employee benefit plans and charitable and endowment assets, and provides defined contribution plan services to organizations nationwide. With $53 billion in assets under management as of Dec. 31, 2003, PNC Advisors is one of the largest wealth managers in the U.S.
The PNC Financial Services Group, Inc. is one of the nation's largest diversified financial services organizations, providing regional community banking; wholesale banking, including corporate banking, real estate finance and asset-based lending; wealth management, asset management; and global fund services.
SOURCE: The PNC Financial Services Group, Inc.
CONTACT: Mary E. Biddle of PNC Financial Services Group, Inc.,
+1-302-429-7130, or mary.biddle@pnc.com
Web site: http://www.pnc.com/
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