WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass., March 18, 2009 -- Williams College announced today that Clarence Otis '77 - chairman and chief executive officer of Darden Restaurants - will be the principal speaker at the college's 220th Commencement exercises on Sunday, June 7.  Anne Garrels - senior foreign correspondent of National Public Radio - will be the Baccalaureate speaker on Saturday, June 6.

President of the College Morton Owen Schapiro will confer honorary degrees on both of them as well as to astronaut and Senator John H. Glenn, writer Tracy Kidder, historian James M. McPherson, and musician James Taylor.


Clarence Otis

Otis is chairman and chief executive officer of Darden Restaurants, the world's largest full-service restaurant operating company.  It employs nearly 180,000 people and serves 400 million meals annually in its Red Lobster, Olive Garden, Longhorn Steakhouse, The Capital Grille, Bahama Breeze, and Seasons 52 restaurants.

Before joining Darden in 1995 as corporate treasurer, Otis was managing director and manager of public finance for Chemical Securities, Inc. (now JP Morgan Securities, Inc.). He also worked for Siebert Municipal Capital Group, The First Boston Corporation, and Kidder, Peabody & Company.

Otis earned a Juris Doctor degree from Stanford Law School and is a member of the New York Bar Association. He worked as a securities attorney in New York City for four years prior to beginning his career in financial services.  

Born in Vicksburg, Miss., he grew up in Watts, Calif., at the height of the civil unrest of the 1960s.  His family expected him to work hard in school and, as a standout student, he was encouraged to apply to Williams College by Felix Grossman '56, and recommended for a scholarship by a high school guidance counselor. He earned a bachelor's degree, magna cum laude, from Williams where he was elected a member of the Phi Beta Kappa Society.

He is actively involved in a wide range of educational civic activities.  He serves on the board of directors of The Association to Preserve the Eatonville Community, Inc., a historic cultural preservation organization that represents the nation's oldest incorporated African-American municipality, which is located in central Florida.

In April 2007, Clarence was presented with a Horatio Alger Award and inducted as a lifetime member of the Horatio Alger Association of Distinguished Americans.  He is also an active member of the Executive Leadership Council - a professional network and forum for Fortune 500 African-American executives.


Anne Garrels

National Public Radio (NPR) senior foreign correspondent Garrels became a household name in 2003 when she delivered a stream of live reports from Baghdad as one of only 16 non-embedded U.S. journalists to remain in the city throughout Operation Shock and Awe.

Her celebrated work on Iraq, which began during the Saddam Hussein regime in 2002 and continued as she led NPR coverage there until 2008, is only one of a mind-boggling array of postings, including Russia and other former Soviet republics, China, Saudi Arabia, Mongolia, Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Israel, and the West Bank.

Garrels cut her journalistic teeth at ABC News; over the course of her 10 years there she served as bureau chief for Moscow and Central America. She subsequently was State Department correspondent for NBC News, before joining NPR in 1988.

Upon returning from her initial stint in Baghdad in 2003, Garrels detailed her experiences in "Naked in Baghdad." In the book, Garrels writes: "The obvious stories, press conferences, and official statements that are now the fodder for most news organizations can easily be had from outside Iraq. I am here to try to understand how Iraqis see themselves, their government, and the world around them."

Garrels' journalism has won her numerous accolades, including the George Polk Award, the Courage in Journalism Award from the International Women's Media Foundation, the Alfred I. DuPont Columbia University Award, and the Overseas Press Club Award.

Listeners across the country continue to enjoy Garrels' reports on "All Things Considered," "Morning Edition," "Weekend Edition Saturday," "Weekend Edition Sunday," and "Day to Day."

Garrels was Edward R. Murrow Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations in 1996-97, and is currently a board member of the Committee to Protect Journalists. She received her B.A. from Harvard University in 1972.


John H. Glenn

Glenn attended Muskingum College, where he received his private pilot's license at age 21, months before Pearl Harbor was bombed. He arrived at the Navy's pre-flight school in March 1942 and served in the Navy, Marine Corps, and Air Force for the next decade, earning the nickname "MiG Mad Marine" for shooting down three enemy MiG jet fighters on a Korean War border patrol.

After returning from Korea in 1953, Glenn served for six years as a test pilot and rose to national fame, receiving the fifth of his six Distinguished Flying Crosses for completing the first transcontinental flight to average supersonic speed.

In 1959, he volunteered for Project Mercury, NASA's first manned space program, and made history as the third person and first American to orbit the earth in 1962.

Glenn joined Royal Crown Cola as vice president for corporate development in 1964, eventually serving as president of Royal Crown International.

Throughout his corporate career, Glenn had been encouraged by Robert Kennedy to enter public service.  His first Senate campaign in the 1964 Ohio Democratic primary hit a wall when he sustained a concussion in a fall but Glenn won a seat in the U.S. Senate in 1974, and held that seat until his retirement from politics in 1999. Throughout his tenure, he was known for working on legislation to restrict the proliferation of nuclear weapons around the world and address radioactive waste accumulations domestically.

Glenn teaches in the department of political science and the school of public policy and management at Ohio State University, where he also chairs the board of directors for the John Glenn Institute of Public Service and Public Policy.


Tracy Kidder

Kidder, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and non-fiction author, published his breakthrough work, "The Soul of a New Machine," in 1981. Following Data General's development of the Eclipse/MV minicomputer, the book showcases Kidder's ability to make the technological processes behind building a computer accessible to the lay reader, along with revealing insights on the tech industry's shift to an increasingly demanding work ethic.

He has written on topics as varied as railroads, energy, architecture, and the environment. His books include "House," "Among Schoolchildren," "Home Town," "Old Friends," "My Detachment: A Memoir," and perhaps his most famous book, "Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, A Man Who Would Cure the World."

"Mountains Beyond Mountains" follows Farmer's endeavors to improve international health care. The work depicts a modern day hero who strives to help the needy, specifically focusing on treating HIV and tuberculosis in Haiti. Jonathan Harr, author of "Civil Action," wrote of the book, "The central character of this marvelous book ... has embarked on an epic struggle that will take you from the halls of Harvard Medical School to a sun-scorched plateau in Haiti, from the slums of Peru to the cold gray prisons of Moscow. [Farmer] wants to change the world. Certainly this luminous and powerful book will change the way you see it."

Kidder earned his bachelor's degree from Harvard University in 1967. The following year, he served as a lieutenant in the Vietnam War. He attended the University of Iowa from which he received his M.F.A. and where he participated in the Writers' Workshop, a program known for its literary luster.

James M. McPherson

McPherson is the George Henry Davis 1886 Professor of American History, Emeritus at Princeton University. Author of 18 books, he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1989 for "Battle Cry of Freedom."  Considered by many the best single-volume history of the American Civil War, McPherson went on to serve as an advisor for the 1990 critically acclaimed PBS documentary, "The Civil War."

In 2009, McPherson was awarded the Lincoln Prize for the second time for his book "Tried by War: Abraham Lincoln as Commander in Chief."  The award is given for the finest scholarly work on Abraham Lincoln or the American Civil War soldier. He won the award in 1998 for his book "For Cause and Comrades."  His 1964 "The Struggle for Equality," received the Anisfield-Wolf Award, given to writers who have made important contributions to the understanding of racism and diversity.
 
In 2000, he was named the Jefferson Lecturer by the National Endowment for the Humanities. It is the highest honor the federal government confers for distinguished intellectual achievement in the humanities. The recipient is honored for his or her ability to communicate the knowledge and wisdom of the humanities in a broadly appealing way. In 2007, he became the first ever recipient of the $100,000 Pritzker Military Library Literature Award for lifetime achievement in military history.

McPherson is an avid preservationist, dedicated to protecting Civil War battlefields. He has served on the boards of both the Civil War Trust and the Association for the Preservation of Civil War Sites. As president of Protect Historic America, he successfully opposed a plan to build a commercial historical theme park near Virginia's Manassas battlefield.    

He earned his B.A. from Gustavus Adolphus College and his Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University.
 

James Taylor

Throughout his career, musician Taylor's work has been recognized with 40 gold, platinum, and multi-platinum awards and five Grammy awards. This gifted guitarist is best known for songs such as "Fire and Rain," "Something in the Way She Moves," and "Carolina In My Mind."

Taylor's path to 40 million album sales began with cello lessons as a child in North Carolina. He soon switched to the guitar, and was playing in coffeehouses with aspiring guitarist Danny Kortchmar by age 15. He gained his first experience with the recording industry three years later with Kortchmar and the band The Flying Machine, which played material that Taylor had written.

Taylor became the first non-British act signed to the Beatle's Apple label. Two years later, Warner Brothers released his album "Sweet Baby James," which held the wildly popular single "Fire and Rain" and went triple-platinum.  

The following year Taylor won the first of his five Grammy awards for "You've Got a Friend." 1971 also saw him gracing the cover of Time magazine, as a forerunner of "the singer/songwriter era."

In 1976, just eight years after releasing his first album, Taylor recorded his "Greatest Hits" album. It received the RIAA's diamond award and sold more than 11 million copies.  

Recently, there have been a constant stream of accolades: Billboard magazine's 1998 Century Award, inductions into the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame and the Songwriter's Hall of Fame in 2000, and a 2008 Emmy nomination for his CD/DVD "One Man Band."

Taylor is active in the environmental and political sphere. He served as a board member of the Natural Resources Defense Council for 25 years and has worked with several presidential and gubernatorial campaigns.

Related link: Commencement 2009

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Founded in 1793, Williams College is the second oldest institution of higher learning in Massachusetts. The college's 2,000 students are taught by a faculty noted for the quality of their teaching and research, and the achievement of academic goals includes active participation of students with faculty in their research. Students' educational experience is enriched by the residential campus environment in Williamstown, Mass., which provides a host of opportunities for interaction with one another and with faculty beyond the classroom. Admission decisions are made regardless of a student's financial ability, and the college provides grants and other assistance to meet the demonstrated needs of all who are admitted. To visit the college on the Internet: www.williams.edu