| On April 1, WQED Multimedia presented the 2004 Elsie Awards in a ceremony at the Carnegie Music Hall celebrating the 50th anniversary of WQED, the first public television station in the United States. Above, Pitt Trustee and WQED Multimedia President and CEO George Miles and Pitt friend and benefactor Elsie Hillman arrive on stage at the ceremony dressed as President Dwight D. Eisenhower and his wife, Mamie. Eisenhower was president in 1954, the year that WQED was founded. Honored at the ceremony were Pittsburgh jazz guitarist Joe Negri, a performance faculty member in the Pitt Department of Music; Drue Heinz, the Pittsburgh philanthropist who established the Drue Heinz Literature Prize at the University of Pittsburgh Press; author John Edgar Wideman, who edited the 2001 short story collection 20: The Best of the Drue Heinz Literature Prize, published by the University of Pittsburgh Press; Rob Marshall, director of the 2002 Academy Award-winning film Chicago; Joan Ganz Cooney, originator of Sesame Street; and Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security and former Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge. |
