The 1953 Awardees

Edward F. Barry
(1893-1984)

LLB 1920, Honorary Degree 1961
Memphis, TN

Ed Barry, a Memphis attorney and philanthropist, received the John Carroll Award in ceremonies held at the Mayflower Hotel on April 18, 1953.

A native of Memphis, Barry received his undergraduate degree from St. Mary's College of Kansas in 1915 and served in the Army Air Corps before receiving his law degree from Georgetown in 1920. At the time of the John Carroll Award, Barry served as a prominent attorney and bank executive in Memphis, and a part time owner of the Memphis Chicks, the city's minor league baseball club. An early investment in the Haloid Photographic Company (later to become Xerox) made Ed Barry a wealthy man, but he gave much of it away to Catholic charities in the Memphis area. Over the years, he also led local charitable efforts for the Red Cross, American Cancer Society and Christian Brothers University.

Barry's story became more remarkable in the years following the award. In 1960, Barry had an audience with Pope John XXIII. Upon meeting him, the Pope spoke in the future tense, not past. Upon hearing he was from Memphis, the pontiff told the 67 year old that "you will do great things there."

It was five years earlier that actor Danny Thomas had unsuccessfully sought to build a children's hospital in honor of a promise he made to St. Jude, the patron saint of hopeless causes. Finding little interest in Hollywood, Thomas traveled to Chicago and approached Cardinal Stritch about funding a project there. Instead, Stritch exhorted him to look to Memphis. "If Mr. Barry takes you on, you stay in Memphis, and you will build your hospital," said the cardinal.

Upon their meeting, Barry took on the efforts to build the $2.5 million hospital, personally co-signing the loan and rallying civic leaders to support the project. It opened in 1962 as the first completely integrated hospital in the South, a condition demanded by both Barry and Thomas. Since its opening, research at the hospital increased the survival rate for children's acute lymphoblastic leukemia from four percent in 1962 to 94 percent today. "Thanks to St. Jude and "St." Edward Barry, miracles occur every day in Memphis," wrote the Memphis Commercial Appeal.

Ed Barry served as the chairman of the board of St. Jude for 20 years, retiring in 1982. He died in 1984 at the age of 91.

Hon. Thomas C. Egan
(1895-1961)

AB 1917
Philadelphia, PA

Thomas Egan, who served as a U.S. District Court judge for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, and past president of the Georgetown University Alumni Association, received the John Carroll Award in ceremonies held at the Mayflower Hotel on April 18, 1953.

Egan grew up in Shenandoah, PA and received an undergraduate degree from Georgetown in 1917 and a law degree from the University of Pennsylvania in 1921. Following a three decade career in private practice, Egan was nominated by President Eisenhower to the U.S. District Court in Philadelphia, where he served on the bench from 1957 until his death in 1961 at the age of 66.

As president of the Alumni Association from 1950 through 1952, Egan led the efforts to institute the annual John Carroll dinner that honored him following the conclusion of his tenure.

Leo V. Klauberg
(1894-1980)

AB 1916
New York, NY

Leo Klauberg, a New York businessman and alumni leader, received the John Carroll Award in ceremonies held at the Mayflower Hotel on April 18, 1953.

A lifelong resident of Brooklyn, NY, Klauberg was the fourth generation of his family to enter the cutlery business, which his great-great grandfather had founded in New York in 1819. Maintaining close ties to Georgetown, Klauberg served as president of the Georgetown Club of New York for many years and served on the Board of Governors of the Alumni Association from 1940 to 1944.

Klauberg died in 1980 at the age of 85.

Dr. James E. Mahoney

DDS 1923
Wood River, IL

James Mahoney, a St. Louis area dentist and alumni volunteer, received the John Carroll Award in ceremonies held at the Mayflower Hotel on April 18, 1953.

Dr. Mahoney grew up in Natick, MA and received his degree from the Dental School in 1923. from there, he relocated to Wood River, IL, northeast of St. Louis. Mahoney spent 39 years as a dentist, and was a former president of the Illinois Dental Society.

Hon. David A Pine
(1891-1970)

LLB 1913
Washington DC

Judge David Pine, a member of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia from 1940 to 1965, received the John Carroll Award in ceremonies held at the Mayflower Hotel on April 18, 1953. (As a result of a typographical error in University records, Judge Pine was inaccurately listed as a 1963 awardee for many years thereafter.)

Born in Washington in 1891, Pine dropped out of school in 1907 upon the death of his father, and went to work for the railway. A subsequent job with the Army War College allowed Pine to take evening classes at Georgetown, leading to a law degree in 1913. Following military service, Pine worked in the Justice Department and was in private practice through 1934.

In 1934, Pine became an assistant United States attorney and was elevated to U.S attorney in 1938. Wrote the New York Times: "During his term he bore down heavily on gambling racketeers and corruption in the United States Marshal's office. He also sent to jail a Congressman and his son for conspiring to sell a West Point appointment."

Pine was named to the U.S. District Court in 1940, serving as chief judge from 1959 to 1961 and assumed senior status through 1965. In a 25 year career, his most famous ruling was in 1952, declaring President Truman's seizure of steel plants in advance of a strike unconstitutional. The decision was upheld by the Supreme Court, whereupon Senator Walter George called the judge "that single courageous man on the bench here in Washington, where official privilege and official power take [the] backbone out of most men."

David Pine died in 1970 at the age of 78.

Amb. James W. Riddleberger
(1904-1982)

MA 1929
Washington DC

James Riddleberger, a Career Ambassador with the U.S. Department of State, received the John Carroll Award in ceremonies held at the Mayflower Hotel on April 18, 1953.

Riddleberger, a native of Washington, DC, arrived at Georgetown for graduate courses following his undergraduate degree from Randolph-Macon College. Upon graduation from Georgetown, he joined the United States Foreign Service in 1929, serving for 38 years.

Following posts with the U.S. embassies in Geneva and Berlin, Riddleberger served as chief of the Central European Affairs division with the State Department during World War II. Following the War, he spent two years as counselor to the U.S. mission in West Berlin and two years in Paris to support the administration of the Marshall Plan.

In 1952, Riddleberger was named as assistant secretary of state and the director of the Bureau of German Affairs. The appointment was short lived as he was appointed ambassador to Yugoslavia two months later. He served four years in Yugoslavia, followed by ambassadorships in Greece (1958-59) and Austria (1962-67). In 1960, he was named a Career Ambassador by President Eisenhower, the highest such honor in the Foreign Service.

From 1959 to 1961, he served as a founding director of the International Cooperation Administration, the predecessor organization to the Agency for International Development.

Ambassador Riddleberger died in 1982 at the age of 78.

Maj. Gen. William E. Shambora, MD
(1900-1975)

MD 1925
Tokyo, Japan

General William Shambora, chief surgeon of U.S. Army and United Nations Forces during the Korean War, received the John Carroll Award in ceremonies held at the Mayflower Hotel on April 18, 1953.

A native of Hazleton, PA, Shambora enrolled in Georgetown's ROTC program in 1921 and received his medical degree in 1925. Following residency, he held a number of medical administrative posts in the Army before attending the Army War College at Carlisle, PA as an instructor in 1938. During World War II, Col. Shambora served as chief surgeon for the Ninth Army under Lt. Gen. William Simpson, and received the Army Distinguished Service Medal.

Following World War II, Shambora served as commandant of the Brooke Army Medical Center at Fort Sam Houston, TX. In 1947 he was assigned to the Pacific theater in Tokyo, and led the U.S. medical efforts during the Korean War.

His John Carroll Award was presented three months prior to the suspension of hostilities in Korea in July 1953, from which he returned to Fort Sam Houston as its commanding general until his retirement from military service in 1960.

Gen. Shambora died in 1975 at the age of 74.

Hughes Spalding
(1886-1969)

AB 1908
Atlanta, GA

Hughes Spalding, an prominent Atlanta attorney and civic leader, received the John Carroll Award in ceremonies held at the Mayflower Hotel on April 18, 1953.

The second of three generations of Atlanta attorneys, Spalding joined his father's law firm following an undergraduate degree at Georgetown and a law degree at the University of Georgia. Over the next half century, he built King & Spalding into Atlanta's most powerful and influential law firm.

Spalding is remembered today not for his clients, but his conscience. As chairman of the Fulton County hospital board, Spalding saw a growing health care crisis that was exacerbated not only by segregation, but by class--African Americans who were indigent were treated by the public Grady Hospital, but middle class citizens would not be admitted by other Atlanta hospitals. In 1946, Margaret Mitchell, author of Gone With the Wind, wrote to Spalding for help after a household servant died without being admitted to a local hospital. "I do not think people who have not experienced so heartbreaking a time can realize the need for more beds for [those] who are able to pay something for medical and hospital care...Atlanta is big enough now to have colored people in the white-collar class, and I wonder how many of them have been in the situation of our Carrie, willing to pay but being unable to buy a bed in which to die."

Working with the Atlanta Urban League, Spalding marshaled community support to build a non-profit hospital adjacent to Grady Hospital and to provide training opportunities for African-American doctors unable to work in the then-segregated public hospital system. The building was built in 1952 and named in his honor, and the Hughes Spalding Pavilion (now known as the Children's Healthcare of Atlanta at Hughes Spalding) is one of the leading hospitals in the city.

Spalding was generous of his time to both his alma maters. He served on the Board of Governors and Board of Regents at Georgetown, while he twice served as chairman of the University of Georgia Board of Regents. His son Hughes, Jr. (C'39) received the John Carroll Award in 1980.

Hughes Spalding died in 1969 at the age of 83.