Saturday, August 14th, 2010: We had a great day celebrating the 75th anniversary of Social Security at our Frances Perkins Center 2nd Annual Garden Party. We had two New Deal grandchildren on hand to cut the cake. Professor June Hopkins is the granddaughter of Harry Hopkins and Tomlin Perkins Coggeshall is Frances Perkins's grandson. Perkins was the chair and Hopkins was a member of the Committee on Economic Security, which creatd the Social Security Act. We also heard short acceptance speeches from our Frances Perkins Leadership award winners, Brooksley Born, Nancy Altman, and Megan Williams. June Hopkins, granddaughter of Harry Hopkins, one of the architects of the New Deal and close advisor to President Roosevelt, was kind enough to share a few words as well..

Intelligence and Courage Award -- Brooksley Born
Brooksley Born is the former chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Recognizing the dangers of unregulated derivatives trading, she warned about the potential collapse of the financial system but her warnings were not heeded. Her attempt to save the country from economic disaster is the subject of a PBS Frontline documentary, "The Warning." Brooksley was honored by the JFK Library last year with a "Profile in Courage Award." Learn more here.



Steadfast Award -- Nancy Altman
Nancy Altman has been working on Social Security policy since the 1980s, when she worked on the 1983 Greenspan Commission on Social Security as Alan Greenspan's assistant. She has taught at both Harvard's Kennedy School and Law School and is a founder of the National Academy of Social Insurance, on the board of the Pension Rights Center, and co-founder of SocialSecurity-Works.org. She has testified before Congress on Social Security policy on numerous occasions and is the author of The Battle for Social Security: From FDR's Vision to Bush's Gamble. (Books will be available for purchase and can be autographed.)



Open Door Award -- Megan Williams
Megan Williams is the executive director of Hardy Girls Healthy Women. Named one of the ten people shaping the future of Maine's economy by MaineBiz last year, Megan was hired to lead Hardy Girls in 2005, a year after her graduation from Colby College in Waterville, Maine. She has nurtured the ten-year-old nonprofit from its local roots into a flourishing organization with programs featuring mentoring, an emphasis on strength and activism, and national workshops and curricula. This year, Hardy Girls Healthy Women was given the Governor's award for nonprofit excellence this year. For more information, visit Hardy Girls Healthy Women.



June Hopkins, Ph.D.
Historian June Hopkins received her Ph. D. from Georgetown in 1997. Her biographical study of her grandfather's social work career from 1912 through the Great Depression, Harry Hopkins: Sudden Hero, Brash Reformer, was published by St. Martin's Press in 1999 and Jewish first wife, divorced: The Selected Letters and Papers of Ethel Gross and Harry Hopkins, co-edited with Allison Giffen was published by Rowman and Littlefield in 2003. Hopkins has been a professor of American history at Armstrong Atlantic State University in Savannah, Georgia, since 1998 and has been head of the history department for the past four years. She is now working on a history of World War II and the relationship between Winston Churchill and Harry Hopkins.