Connections

A legacy of service

Last month, I, like so many people, was saddened by news of the death of Walter H. Annenberg, a true visionary whose overwhelming generosity is likely never to be equaled.

Through his support of countless cultural, educational and charitable causes, Mr. Annenberg has touched lives across the United States and around the world. He was especially generous to the people of the Delaware Valley, contributing hundreds of millions of dollars to various institutions and initiatives to help improve the lives of everyone in this great region.

One of Mr. Annenberg’s greatest passions was education, and, throughout the course of his life, he gave more than $1 billion to advance public education in America on every level. During a special tribute on WHYY-FM’s Radio Times last month, Kathleen Hall Jamieson, dean of the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania, remembered the school’s founder as a man truly ahead of his time, who had "a remarkable capacity to see things that were the future and then to make them happen."

Mr. Annenberg saw the limitless potential of technology to make the world a better place and actively supported projects that developed more effective ways to share ideas and knowledge. No matter what the newest method of communication was, he encouraged people to find ways to use it to help society.

When television was in its infancy, he was among the first to recognize the power of this medium to have a positive influence in people’s lives, and ultimately, to change the way people learn. His pioneering use of television to present educational programming in the early 1940s shaped the way television would be used for decades to come.

In 1981, The Annenberg Foundation partnered with the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) to create the Annenberg/CPB Project, with a mission to "use media and telecommunications to advance excellent teaching in American schools." In addition to providing educational video programs and Web and print materials on nearly every subject to elementary and high school teachers, many of the programs produced through this partnership are distributed to public broadcasting stations across the country.

WHYY airs these telecourses on TV12 as part of our Adult Learning Service. We have also partnered with local colleges to allow students working toward a degree to earn credit by recording the programs on their VCR, watching them at a time convenient for them, and completing the required coursework. (Please visit www.whyy.org/homecollege.)

As a result of Mr. Annenberg’s incredible foresight and philanthropy, more than five million Americans of all ages and from all walks of life have had the chance to expand their minds by viewing these high-quality educational programs in schools and in their homes. In the tri-state region alone, more than 13,000 distance-learners have earned college credit through the telecourses and online courses offered through WHYY’s Home College Service.

Walter Annenberg’s was a life lived in service to others. He was always conscious of how he might use his good fortune to help open up a world of information and learning for all people, whatever their age, race or economic status, today and for future generations.

I count myself among the many people who have been inspired by Mr. Annenberg’s legacy of service, and I am proud and humbled to be part of an organization that, through a variety of communication platforms, can carry on his vision of using technology to educate, inform and inspire all citizens. We hope in some small way, by Mr. Annenberg’s example, to make your lives more meaningful and to make this region, a place that Mr. Annenberg dearly loved, a better place in which to live, work and raise a family.

For more information, visit www.annenbergfoundation.org/home

Warm regards,
William J. Marrazzo
President and Chief Executive Officer