This year’s Truman Good Neighbor Award is going to a Missourian.
Former U.S. Sen. Jean Carnahan will receive the award at the Harry S. Truman Good Neighbor Award Foundation luncheon on May 6 at the Marriott Hotel-Muehlbach Tower in downtown Kansas City.
Carnahan, a Democrat, was Missouri’s first female U.S. senator. Her husband, Mel, was governor of Missouri for two terms and then died in a plane crash three weeks before the elections in November 2000. He won the race anyway, and she was appointed to his seat in the Senate but lost a bid to keep that seat two years later.
The Good Neighbor Award dates back to 1973, the year after the former president’s death.
Winners have included President Gerald Ford, Royals founding owner Ewing Kauffman and author David McCullough. Last year’s winner was U.S. Sen. Christopher S. “Kit” Bond, a Missouri Republican who is retiring after this year.
Carnahan is the fourth woman to win the award, following former United Nations Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick in 1984, former U.S. Sen. Nancy Kassebaum Baker of Kansas in 1997 and former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Conner in 2005.
A similar award, the Harry Truman Public Service Award, is presented each year by the city of Independence.
Both are awarded around the 33rd president’s birthday, May 8.
Carnahan and her husband received the Harry Truman Public Service Award in 2001.
