New Jersey Hall Of Fame Announces Nominees
The New Jersey Hall of Fame has announced its 51 nominees to be considered for induction for its Class of 2013.
The public will get to vote online at njhalloffame.org on their favorites selected in the categories of Arts and Entertainment, Sports, Historical, Enterprise (including business and technology), and General through May 6. The inductees for the Hall of Fame’s 6th class will be announced late spring and formally inducted later in the year.
The Hall of Fame committee announced in January the annual induction ceremony, usually held in June was being postponed and a date for the ceremony at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center in Newark was cancelled.
The New Jersey Hall of Fame is a web-based "hall" that hopes to have a mobile museum that can visit schools and organizations.
A government reorganization that changed the mission of the New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority last summer had resulted in a complete overhaul of the Hall of Fame. “We are starting at ground zero, looking at all of the options,” said sports authority president and CEO Wayne Hasenbalg at the time.
The 2013 Nominees
Among the Historical category nominees are President Grover Cleveland, Aaron Burr, himself vice president under Thomas Jefferson,female film pioneer, director and producer Alice Guy Blaché; Revolutionary War era luminaries Thomas Paine, Molly Pitcher, William Paterson, and Richard Stockton; African-American business executive Sarah Spencer Washington; activists Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Irene Hill Smith; and award winning poet and journalist Joyce Kilmer.
Nominees in the Arts & Entertainment Category are Alan Alda, Nathan Lane, Eddie Murphy, Joe Pesci, Joe Piscopo, Brooke Shields, Whitney Houston, Dionne Warwick, Dizzie Gillespie, and Ernie Kovaks.
The Enterprise Category includes make-up artist and entrepreneur Bobbi Brown, business & arts executive Raymond Chambers; military colonel, business leader, and school benefactor Fairleigh S. Dickinson; mental health advocate and crusader Dorothea Lynde Dix; civil engineer John Roebling; financial trailblazer Mary Roebling; inventor David Sarnoff; former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker; and celebrated chef Alice Waters,
Recent NFL Hall Of Fame inductee coach Bill Parcells, Dick Vitale; basketball greats Rick Barry, Carol Blazejowski, and Willis Reed; boxing champion Jersey Joe Walcott; Olympic track stars Joetta Clark Diggs and Mary Decker Slaney; football great Rosy Grier; Olympic figure skating legend and broadcaster Dick Button; and team owner and executive Sonny Werblin are nominated in the Sports category.
Nominated in the largest category, General, are Connie Chung, philanthropist Doris Duke, economist Milton Friedman, sculptor J. Seward Johnson, former N.J. Governor Tom Kean, acclaimed writers and authors Norman Mailer, John McPhee, and Dorothy Parker; Congressman Peter Rodino, and network news anchor Brian Williams.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.