CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA. – Joseph Neubauer, the 2010 recipient of the Thomas Jefferson Foundation Medal in Citizen Leadership, will be the featured speaker Tuesday, April 13, at Monticello’s commemoration of the birth of Thomas Jefferson.
The event marking the 267th anniversary of Jefferson’s birth will begin at 9 a.m. on Monticello’s West Lawn and also feature fife and drum music, a wreath-presentation ceremony, and a 21-gun salute.
Neubauer is chairman and CEO of ARAMARK, a leading provider of food, hospitality, facility, and uniform services. He is the fourth recipient of the citizenship leadership medal.
Neubauer, whose parents fled Nazi Germany, arrived in the United States from Israel at age 14. He earned his bachelor’s degree from Tufts University and an M.B.A. from the University of Chicago. After working at Chase Manhattan Bank and PepsiCo, Inc., Neubauer joined ARAMARK in 1979. He was elected president in April 1981, chief executive officer in February 1983, and chairman in April 1984.
Under Neubauer’s leadership, ARAMARK has consistently earned a place on Fortune magazine’s annual “World's Most Admired Companies” list, and in 2005 he received the Woodrow Wilson Award for Corporate Leadership.
The music at the Monticello event will be provided by the Old Guard Fife and Drum Corps, part of the 3rd U.S. Infantry stationed at Fort Meyer, Va. The unit’s members wear uniforms patterned after those worn by musicians in the Continental Army circa 1781 and play 10-hole fifes, rope-tensioned drums, and single-valve bugles to re-create the sounds of the Revolutionary War era.
Wreaths honoring Jefferson will be presented by representatives of local, state, and national institutions and organizations. The wreaths will be placed at Jefferson’s gravesite following the West Lawn ceremony.
The 21-gun salute will be fired by members of American Legion Post 74 of Charlottesville-Albemarle County. The Monticello High School ROTC will be the color guard at the event.
Jefferson was born in 1743 at Shadwell, his father’s estate on the Rivanna River about two miles east of Monticello. On the Julian calendar employed at the time, Jefferson was born April 2. The Gregorian calendar in use today was adopted in 1752, and 11 days were added to “old style” dates.
Monticello’s commemoration of Jefferson’s birth is free and open to the public. Visitors coming to Monticello expressly for the ceremony should identify themselves at the ticket counter in the Dominion Welcome Pavilion at the Thomas Jefferson Visitor Center, where they will be given directions to the event. Paid admission tickets will be required for the guided tours of the Monticello house and grounds.
Following the Monticello event, Neubauer and the other 2010 Thomas Jefferson Foundation Medal recipients – Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano (law) and environmentalist and ethicist Edward O. Wilson (architecture) – will be honored at the University of Virginia, part of the school’s Founder’s Day activities.
The Thomas Jefferson Foundation Medals are presented jointly each year by UVa and the Thomas Jefferson Foundation, the private, nonprofit organization that owns and operates Monticello. The medals are the highest external honors bestowed by the university, which grants no honorary degrees.
