Exemplary example: MC students
to hear lecture from Pregracke Release Date:
September 4, 2008
MONMOUTH, Ill. — "River rescuer" Chad Pregracke, who received
the nation’s Jefferson Award for Public Service in 2002, will deliver a Monmouth
College convocation lecture on Sept. 9 at 11 a.m. in the Dahl Chapel and
Auditorium.
The convocation, which is part of the college’s Introduction to
Liberal Arts course entitled "Exemplary Lives," is free and open to the
public.
Founder and president of Living Lands & Waters, Pregracke is living
proof that one person can make a difference. For 10 years, his
not-for-profit environmental organization has tackled scores of
Mississippi River cleanup projects, pulling more than four million
pounds of trash from its banks. Thousands of volunteers have cooperated
to help with the community cleanups, Riverbottom Forest Restoration and
Adopt-a-Mississippi River Mile programs.
Pregracke is co-author of the autobiographical "From the Bottom Up,"
which traces his life story from his days as a clam diver frustrated
with the dirty Mississippi to his award-winning work with Living Lands &
Waters.
The organization has also drawn the notice of several major
television networks, and he has been featured in numerous national and
international magazines, including Reader’s Digest and Smithsonian. In
2001, Biography magazine selected him as one of the "Top Ten Future
Classics in America" along with Julia Roberts, Tiger Woods and others.
The Mississippi River was literally Pregracke’s back yard while he
was growing up. Throughout high school and college, he worked various
jobs on the Mississippi and Illinois rivers, sometimes living on their
islands. While there, he noticed that the condition of the rivers was
getting worse due to the accumulation of trash on the shorelines. While
still in college, he set out in the spring of 1997 to make a difference
"one river at a time … one piece of garbage at a time."
Five years later, Pergracke accepted the Jefferson Award, which is
the nation’s version of the Nobel Prize for public service. He has
attended international conferences to speak on river cleanup, and he
received an honorary degree in 2003 from St. Ambrose University, which
praised his "epic journey from river rat to nationally-known
environmental activist." Two years later, he was named the 2005 Quad
Citian of the Year in a River Cities’ readers poll.
Released
by the Office of College Communications
Barry McNamara, Associate Director of College Communications
Phone: 309-457-2117
Fax: 309-457-2330
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