07/06/2021

First Ladies Association for Research and Education (FLARE) Announces Inaugural Lewis L. Gould Award Recipient

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Media Contact: Myra Gutin drgutin@comcast.net or Nancy Kegan Smith nksnancy@aol.com   

First Ladies Association for Research and Education (FLARE)
Announces Inaugural Award

Washington, D.C. (July 6, 2021) − Lewis L. Gould, the Eugene Barker Centennial Emeritus Professor of History at the University of Texas-Austin, has been named the inaugural recipient of an award that recognizes distinguished contributions to research and education about America’s first ladies. The award, which will be named for Prof. Gould, was announced today by the First Ladies Association for Research and Education (FLARE).

FLARE’s founding president and first lady scholar, Myra Gutin, said this of Gould’s influence on the field: "Dr. Lewis L. Gould's pioneering work opened the door to the development of a new discipline, the study of the first lady. He encouraged and inspired a generation of scholars and others interested in the presidential spouse to research and then share what they had learned with the American public. He has been our guiding light."  

The award was presented to Prof. Gould during a special virtual ceremony on June 10, 2021 (Lewis L. Gould Award Ceremony - YouTube). In receiving the award, Gould said: “The launching of FLARE is a welcome development to all of us who have followed the history of First Ladies over the past four decades. Intensive study of these important women can now go forward. I am deeply honored both in the name of the award and the choice of the first recipient.” 

For more than forty years, Prof. Gould has been a pioneer in the study of the wives of America’s Presidents. He was the first to develop a university-level course on the history and legacies of America’s first ladies at the University of Texas-Austin in 1982. Two years later he was the keynote speaker at the first national first ladies conference, convened by Mrs. Betty Ford. He has authored more than a dozen books, including The Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt, The Modern American Presidency, Lady Bird Johnson and the Environment, and American First Ladies: Their Lives and Their Legacies. His book that analyzed Lady Bird Johnson’s contribution to environmentalism was the first attempt to demonstrate a first lady’s impact on the American society. In 1998, Gould became the editor for the Modern First Ladies series published by the University Press of Kansas.

FLARE was launched June 21, 2021 (FLARE | First Ladies Association of Research and Education (flare-net.org), in partnership with American University’s School of Public Affairs.

 About First Ladies Association for Research and Education

FLARE’s mission is to create and sustain a network to promote and publicize research and education about the contributions, lives. Impacts, and lasting legacies of U.S. First Ladies. FLARE will serve as the primary association to encourage interdisciplinary collaboration and outreach among scholars, institutions, first ladies’ staff, biographers, archivists, journalists, and public historians interested in research and education about the lasting legacies of U.S. First Ladies.

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