Prizes and Awards
Many people consider Nobel Prizes to be the highest honors that human beings give to each other. Ray and I like to imagine that one particular Nobel Prize winner visited our house, perhaps on several occasions. Back in 2003 when our realtor showed us the home where we live now, we were looking for a bit of land, something large enough for both our home and Notgrass History, and, of essential importance, a place we could afford. To our delight, we found all of those things, plus a beautiful view and a place of local historic significance. Ray and I live in the ancestral home of Judge John Jordan Gore (1874-1939). He, his father, his grandfather, and other family members are buried in the cemetery at the back of our yard.
Gore studied at Cumberland School of Law in Lebanon, Tennessee. I am also a graduate of Cumberland. Cumberland’s history has had its ups and downs. Today it is a respected university, but when I graduated in 1973, the law school had moved to Birmingham, Alabama, and Cumberland was a junior college.
Gore began practicing law in 1894 while continuing to farm. In 1923 President Warren G. Harding appointed him a U.S. district court judge. Gore hired a farm manager and moved to Nashville, where he lived in the Hermitage Hotel while continuing to return to his Jackson County home on weekends and holidays. Judge Gore sometimes brought Nashville friends home for the weekend, and the farm manager’s wife, Maude Crabtree, cooked for those Nashville friends. A lifelong bachelor, Gore also enjoyed celebrating Christmas with the Crabtree children in his bedroom, which was sometimes in what is now Ray’s office and sometimes in our current living room.
One of Judge Gore’s claims to fame was his longtime friendship with President Franklin Roosevelt’s Secretary of State Cordell Hull, a fellow Tennessean and the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1945. Gore and Hull, who had gone to prep school together, shared a law office in downtown Gainesboro. Our town square has both a Gore Street and a Hull Street. Several months ago, Ray and I fulfilled a dream when we got to tour their upstairs office which had long been vacant. At the time, it was being renovated to be a loft apartment which was preserving the beautiful woodwork and other remnants of the days when it was their office. Ray and I like to think that Hull visited Gore at our house during that year and perhaps even after Hull moved to Washington, D.C.
Cordell Hull portrait by Harry Warnecke
and Robert F. Cranston, 1949,
National Portrait Gallery,
Smithsonian Institution
I simply wanted to share our tiny bit of connection before sharing about my real topic for today, which is prizes and awards.
History of the Nobel Prize
Alfred Nobel lived in Sweden in the 1800s. He was an expert in explosives. His family had a company that made explosive devices such as mines and torpedoes. His brother and four other people were killed in an accident in their factory. Nobel wanted to find a way to handle the explosive nitroglycerin more safely. He did this by inventing dynamite in 1867.
Nobel became very wealthy from his work with explosives. In his will, he left several million dollars to start a special fund. The interest from that fund was to be used to give prizes to the people who provided the greatest benefit to mankind each year. Nobel wanted the prizes to be given in the fields of physics, chemistry, medicine and physiology, literature, and world peace. Many people believe that Nobel wanted to honor people who helped mankind because he was sorry that his work with dynamite had brought so much destruction to the world.
Alfred Nobel, the Swedish inventor of dynamite,
from the American National Red Cross
photograph collection at the Library of Congress
Nobel Prizes have been awarded every year since 1901. A prize for economics was added in 1969. Committees in Sweden decide who will receive the awards. Each recipient receives a large gold medal and a cash award of about one million dollars.
Lessons from the Nobel Prize Recipients
Today it seems that Nobel Prizes are sometimes awarded for political reasons, but many are well deserved. We can learn from people who have received them. Most people win them after spending many years studying, writing, and working. The awards do not come quickly. We must train our children that they, too, have to work at something for a long time to become good at it.
It is good to encourage our children to aim high in life. Many people are intelligent and have many skills, but they do not try very hard. They do not use well the abilities that God has given them. Every person who receives a Nobel Prize or some other prize could have made excuses for himself and not been helpful to mankind. Cordell Hull could have said that he was only born in a log cabin in Tennessee. We must train our children to work hard.
We can encourage our children to be the kind of people who encourage others to do their best. Most Nobel Prize recipients had family members and fellow workers who did not receive the awards, but many of those family members and fellow workers encouraged the recipients to work hard and keep going. Perhaps our children will never receive what the world considers to be a major award, but our children can encourage others. They can learn to rejoice with others who do achieve great things. They can also do their best to use the gifts God has given them.
Our homeschooled children enjoyed participating in contests and entering handmade items in the county fair, as many other homeschooled children do. Our grandchildren do, too. I am thankful for those opportunities.
During this 250th anniversary year of our great country, Notgrass History is holding a Celebrate America contest for homeschool students. Students can draw a picture, write a poem, compose a song, make a costume, write a story, or make a video. Click here to learn how to enter.
Above all else, we must teach our children to strive to win God’s recognition for using their lives to do His will. We must encourage them to keep their eyes focused on the prize that God will give to His faithful people. He gives rewards whether other people notice or not.
Whatever you do in word or deed,
do all in the name of the Lord Jesus,
giving thanks through Him
to God the Father.
Colossians 3:17 NASB
I press on toward the goal
for the prize of the upward call of God
in Christ Jesus.
Philippians 3:14