PBHH.org: Mary Tucker Jasper Speaker Series / President Benjamin Harrison Home

Governor Mitch Daniels granted a rare Indiana award -- a Sagamore of the Wabash -- to Brian Lamb, founder/CEO of C-SPAN Networks, at the President Benjamin Harrison Home’s dinner October 1 at the Columbia Club at which Lamb was feted on the 30th anniversary of the founding of C-SPAN.

Randall Shepard, chief justice of the Indiana Supreme Court, made the award presentation following a video tribute by Governor Daniels. The governor cited Hoosier qualities in describing Lamb’s honesty and objectivity, which permeate his C-SPAN organization.

The governor said, “’A better mousetrap’ doesn’t begin to describe the extent of Brian’s achievement in giving the nation, and now the world, a window into our democracy. . .In an era of contentious journalism, . . .C-SPAN is an ocean of objectivity. . . .It’s a reflection of Brian himself. You never know his opinions. . . his own uncompromised honesty runs all the way through the organization he has built. . . We’d like to think his Indiana upbringing had a little do with it. There are very few people of whom Indiana is more proud. Therefore, this rare gesture of the State’s gratitude. . . .Thank you so much for the honor you’ve brought to our beloved State.”

This prestigeous event began with a private reception at the President Benjamin Harrison Home where guests had the opportunity to meet Mr. Lamb and enjoy wine and hor d'oeurves. Following the reception, guests gathered for cocktails and dinner at the Columbia Club before Lamb's unscripted look at some of his favorite C-SPAN moments and a special sneak peak of his new series America & the Courts.

Individual Ticket Levels:

The MARY TUCKER JASPER SPEAKER SERIES is made possible through a restricted fund provided by the family of the late Mary Tucker Jasper to support an annual series of lectures. The Fund was provided to honor Mary Tucker Jasper and support increased awareness of President Benjamin Harrison’s role as our “President from Indiana,” and to promote educational opportunities and fund raising support of the President Benjamin Harrison Home.

Past speakers have included: Donna Climenhage, curator of the comprehensive collection of Louis Comfort Tiffany works at the Morse Museum; Pat Stone, co-author of Chicken Soup for the Gardener’s Soul: 101 Stories to Make the Heart Bloom; and Donna McCreary, portraying Mary Todd Lincoln.

MARY TUCKER JASPER was a 75-year member of the Daughters of the American Revolution, Caroline Scott Harrison Chapter. She loved history and gardening and was interested in the President Benjamin Harrison Home at an early age. Her mother, Myrtle Mitchell Tucker, was the first woman high school principal in the State of Indiana. Her husband, Paul George Jasper, was the youngest Supreme Court Justice elected to Supreme Court of Indiana.

BRIAN LAMB is the Founder, Chairman and CEO of C-SPAN Networks. He’s been at the helm of the public affairs channel since he helped the cable industry launch it 30 years ago on March 19, 1979.

Brian has been a regular on-air presence at C-SPAN since the network’s earliest days. Over the years, he has interviewed Presidents Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Clinton, and George W. Bush and many world leaders such as Margaret Thatcher and Mikhail Gorbachev. For 15 years, beginning in 1989, he interviewed 800 non-fiction authors for a weekly program known as Booknotes. Four books of collected interviews have been published based on the Booknotes series. Brian will have one of his books available for sale the evening of the event: Abraham Lincoln: Great American Historians on Our 16th President. Currently, Brian hosts Q and A, an hour long interview program on Sunday evening with people who are making things happen in politics, media, education or technology.

Brian Lamb is a Hoosier--born and raised in Lafayette, Indiana--and took an interest in broadcasting even as a child and young adult, eventually hosting his own television program in Lafayette. After graduating from Purdue with a degree in speech, Brian joined the Navy.

In 1967, his navy service complete, Brian returned home to Lafayette. However, it wasn’t long before he returned to the nation’s capital where he began as a freelance reporter for UPI radio. Later, he served as a Senate press secretary and worked for the White House Office of Telecommunications Policy at a time when a national strategy was being developed for communications satellites. In 1974, Brian returned to journalism, publishing a biweekly newsletter called The Media Report. He also covered telecommunications issues as Washington bureau chief for Cablevision magazine.

It was from this vantage point that C-SPAN began to take shape. Congress was about to televise its proceedings; the cable industry was looking for programming to deliver to its customers by satellite. Brian brought these two ideas together with C-SPAN, which launched with the first televised House of Representatives debate on March 19, 1979.

Brian and his wife Victoria are longtime residents of Arlington, Virginia. When he’s not reading newspapers or non-fiction books, Brian is often in hot pursuit of the latest country music release.