Norman Rockwell Wins Medal of Freedom
On this day in 1977, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor, was bestowed on 83-year-old Norman Rockwell. The country's best-known illustrator had lived in the western Massachusetts town of Stockbridge since 1953. He produced some of his most enduring — and most controversial—work there in a small studio next to his house. Beginning in 1916, with the first of hundreds of covers for the Saturday Evening Post, Norman Rockwell's career spanned nearly 60 years. He used realism and imagination to portray both the heartwarming and the heart-wrenching sides of American life in the twentieth century. The Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge is dedicated to his art.
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