Note: Many of those who attended the award ceremony for the 2003 Albert Schweitzer Gold Medal for Humanitarianism were impressed and moved by Teresa Heinz's acceptance remarks and asked for a copy of those remarks. The following is her prepared text. For background on the award, see this news release.

It is an honor to be here with you this evening. For me, there's something very personal and meaningful about receiving a recognition named after Albert Schweitzer. In the troubled early years of a new century, the arc of this great physician's life carried him from Europe — which at the time was the center of gravity and power in the world — to colonial Africa, where he tended to a poor people desperately in need of his medical care.

In his late 20s, my father, too, went from Europe to Africa as a young doctor, where he spent time in the bush researching tropical diseases and treating the native people. He went on to study radiology and later oncology in France, but returned to Mozambique, his love. And even though we lived in town, he would still spend weekends and holidays at our little cottage in the bush treating the people there, mostly children. The arc of my life carried me away from that land, first to Europe and then to America, which is today the center of power and gravity in a world awakening to the trials of our own troubled century.

I cannot help but reflect on what an odd and futile thing it must have seemed to Schweitzer's contemporaries for a successful man beginning his middle years to abandon the comforts of Europe for the hardships and heartache of Africa. His world about to dissolve into war, he stepped away from the seminal conflicts of his age and chose instead to focus on the sick and frail of a land that many Europeans of his time considered fit for little more than subjugation and exploitation.

And here we are this evening, our own world seemingly dissolving into a strange new age of conflict, celebrating this same impulse, this simple desire to help others. And I know there are many people in the world today who cannot help but see that desire in the same way as Dr. Schweitzer's contemporaries must have — as honorable, yes, yet so trivial when set against the immense sweep of history, which today involves cultures and economies and societies colliding on an unprecedented scale — tectonic shifts that make the small actions of individuals seem tinier still.

In times like these, it is easy to wonder: What hope have we of shaping history with small acts of conscience and kindness?

Yet I believe Dr. Schweitzer knew something his contemporaries didn't- — omething that he found in Africa. There is a special quality about that land, a way of being that affects how one sees one's own place in the world. Dr. Schweitzer discovered that special quality amidst the people and surroundings of his hospital in Lambar‚n‚, Gabon.

Decades later and the width of the continent away, I experienced it growing up in Mozambique. Touched by my father's example and guided and inspired by nature, I learned about the order and respect, the understanding and generosity that come from living in harmony with the natural world. The African savannah was my earliest classroom. It taught me that nature has rules, like not going swimming at dawn or dusk when the sharks and crocodiles feed, indeed when all animals feed and drink, and that life is much easier when you follow those rules. Crocodiles, though, are persuasive teachers.

Those rules taught me something else, and I felt it every time I would dangle upside down in the guava tree of our backyard, daydreaming, or see a boab standing lonely vigil against an impossibly starry sky. It was there in the kindness of the people, and in the dreamy lilac hues of the jacarandas that ambled down the avenues like bridesmaids to the altar. It was a profound sense of connection, a sense of all life being knitted together in ways that gave purpose to every individual, every animal, and every plant.

And not just purpose, but beauty, and dignity.

I am mindful that we gather here this evening two years and twelve days after one of the most shocking acts of hatefulness in memory. I visited Ground Zero with my husband in the week after September 11, and what I saw there reminded me of a saying in my native Portuguese language- — Deus escreve direito por linhas tortas." — which translates roughly as "God writes straight on tortuous lines."

All around were the twisted remains of the World Trade Center — crazy hills of concrete and rebar, an angry moonscape of dust and ash, steam and smoke. Colossal shards of steel thrust defiantly upward as if to stab the sky. Everywhere I looked, there were these broken forms, these tortured lines. And I couldn't help but wonder what God could possibly write on lines such as these — what was His message in such chaos?

In reflecting on it later, I struck upon an answer in something my good and much — missed friend Fred Rogers, Mr. Rogers, used to say, something his mother had told him when he was a little boy about troubled times: "Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping."

Indeed that's where many of us found comfort in the weeks following that terrible tragedy. We found it in the courage and heroism of the firefighters and police who gave their lives that day. And we found it, too, in the courage of the bereaved families, and in the doctors and nurses who waited anxiously for the survivors who never came, then in the way complete strangers reached out to each other in the hours and weeks following to offer their blood, their tears, their solace.

They gave us back our purpose, and they restored a nation's dignity.

Part of what I love about this land is how quick Americans have always been to extend a hand when they see someone in trouble. I have been privileged over the years to meet and work with hundreds of people who have dedicated their lives or careers to helping others. And I have learned that the best of them share three traits.

First, their good work is rooted in respect — respect for the people they would help, the communities they would save, and the environment they would protect. My father taught me that. He always greeted his patients with a hug and asked them about their lives. An accomplished specialist, he never approached his patients with the know-it all arrogance so common among experts — in all fields, not just medicine. He began by listening, because he knew the stories his patients told might shed light on their illnesses. And he liked to care for his patients, whether he was tending to them in the hospital, in the office, or under the pergola at our weekend cottage. That respect made him a better doctor.

Today, at our foundations, one of the first traits we look for in our grantees is this capacity to listen. We look for grantees who strive for excellence and change, but who remain rooted in and reflect the people and community they serve.

The second trait that I believe all true helpers and volunteers share is that, when it counts, they see beyond and they are able to rise above their own personal perspectives and needs. I think about what it must have taken for those firefighters in the World Trade Center to push their way up those stairs past thousands of people fleeing for their lives. Clearly, in those moments, those brave souls were not thinking of what was good for them personally. That type of courage and heroism is rare. But I have seen a more common kind of selflessness displayed in countless men and women — people working at the nonprofits we support, volunteers taking up a cause, or parents helping a child's friend who may be needy for love, for attention or for homework. They sacrifice their time and money, offer their ideas, work tirelessly — not because someone will reward them but because they believe passionately in something other than themselves.

And yet — and this is the third trait that I believe all true volunteers share — their motivation is never blindly altruistic. Asked to comment after 9/11 on why they would risk their lives rushing into a burning building to help people they don't know, many firefighters said: "Because if we don't do it for them, who will do it for our families?"

All the volunteers and helpers I know see themselves as somehow benefiting from their work — not just in some vaguely spiritual way, but directly, by creating a safer place to live, a stronger community, a better society. They see themselves not just as individuals but also as members of something bigger — citizens of a neighborhood, a people, and a nation.

America celebrates its helpers and volunteers more, I think, than any other country in the world. Yet sometimes I wonder whether we realize what a remarkable trait that has been in shaping America's character and history. I believe that spirit defines this country — it defines our greatness — and if we ever forget that, we risk losing touch with what is truly of value in us as Americans.

This is a country built on diversity — on a coming together of different people from different lands at different times. In so many places around the world diversity is seen as a source of weakness and division, but here it has been our intrinsic strength. Every time we have opened the doors of opportunity to African-Americans, Hispanics, Asians, women, the handicapped, religious minorities and others, we have grown stronger. And always what has made that work is the potent combination of three simple traits: respect, selflessness and connectedness. Or, to put it more simply, open hearts and open minds.

How essential it is, then, for our country to continue to symbolize those traits, those values, as it has for generations of people growing up around the world. And how tragic it would be for America to abdicate its long-cherished role in promoting a world built upon those values in favor of a world built on disrespect, selfishness and disconnection.

We cannot afford to make that mistake. Fourteen years ago, I had the opportunity to visit the Brazilian Amazon jungle. Initially, I was surprised. The African savannah of my youth was a much sparser place but it was wide open and you could see almost everything. I went into the rainforest expecting to find a riot of colors, activity and sound. Instead it was dead still, and for a moment I felt disappointed as though I had been tricked.

But the next day I went out at dawn, after the howler monkeys barked and woke us up, and before the heat of the day stilled the forest, and I began to notice something: There were birds flying overhead and butterflies flitting among the leaves. The forest was alive, but you had to let yourself be engulfed and listen to the rhythm of the forest.

The most amazing experience for me was to be in this canopy that was 120 feet high. We were in the gothic cathedral. The trees were anchored by three buttresses rooted in a mere six inches of soil — that's all. I had to wonder what fed them, and looking at the ground, I saw the interplay of mosses, ferns, mushrooms, insects (ants and ant colonies) and animals, and began to understand the beauty and complexity and interdependence of life.

Today, America is like those trees. We are the colossus of the forest, but we are still fed by the interplay of a community of nations and peoples with that of our own. In this era of global everything — global economies, markets, media and culture — the networks of connection that bind us together in a shared destiny span the entire globe.

Embracing that reality is the defining challenge of this generation. It may be engaged, at times, on the field of battle, but ultimately it will be won or lost on the field of ideas — the ideas that guide us and that we embody through our actions as individuals and as a nation. We will win it only by creating a world where differences in race and culture and religion are accepted, where the environment is protected, where human rights are valued, and where individuals can live in dignity and to the utmost of their abilities.

So to go back and answer the question I posed earlier — What hope have we of shaping history with small acts of conscience and kindness? — that is our only hope. That is what I believe God writes in bold script on the forever-twisted lines of human history. All hope for lasting peace and justice in this world of ours lies in the ideals of respect, selflessness and connectedness from which those acts spring. And we must let those values guide us, and use them as a beacon for our strife-torn world.

I thank you for much this award. My dad would be both very humbled and very proud for me, and my mother would be just plain amazed. They both would have known the meaning of this recognition, because they both lived it. Thank you to them, to Africa and to Dr. Schweitzer, a hero, who set the pace for us all in pure terms and to all of you. Good night.

© 2003 The Johns Hopkins University. Baltimore, Maryland. All rights reserved.
Last updated 25Sep03 by dgips@jhu.edu