National Football Foundation

He has served his country with honor as a pilot in combat, as an astronaut in space and just a few months ago he returned to his Alma Mater to serve as the Deputy Commandant of midshipmen at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md.

He is Colonel Charles F. Bolden, Jr., who tonight receives the 1994 National Football Foundation Distinguished American Award.

"The National Football Foundation is dedicated to the idea of success and achievement through teamwork," said NFF Chairman Jon F. Hanson. "Colonel Bolden is a man whose entire life is an extraordinary example of those values. From his early days, learning the lessons of hard work, discipline and teamwork on the football field, to his remarkable achievements as a Marine and Astronaut, he is an inspiration to us all. It is a privilege to honor him with the National Football Foundation's Distinguished American Award."

Football was a big part of growing up for Charlie Bolden. His dad was a winning high school coach. And Bolden, himself, quarterbacked his C.A. Johnson High School team to the South Carolina Black High School State Championship. The year was 1963, the last year of segregation for Johnson High.

An achiever off the field as well as on, Bolden followed a fine high school career with another at the U.S. Naval Academy. After graduation in 1968, he was commissioned a second lieutenant in the U.S. Marine Corps and became a naval aviator.

He's spent a lot of time in a cockpit.

Bolden has logged more than 6,000 hours of flying time; a good portion of it in combat. He flew more than 100 sorties into North and South Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia at the controls of an A-8A Intruder during 1972-73.

Back home, Bolden had a number of Marine Corps assignments and also earned a masters of science degree from the University of Southern California in 1977. In June 1979, he graduated from the tough U.S. Naval Test Pilot School and became an ordnance test pilot working with a number of different planes.

A year later he had attracted the attention of NASA and in August, 1981, he became an Astronaut. He was special assistant to the director of the Johnson Space Center and assistant deputy administrator of NASA.

But most notable were his four missions in space. Bolden served as Space Shuttle pilot for two missions; on the Columbia in 1986 and Discovery in 1990. During those missions, he helped deploy the SATCOM KU satellite and the Hubble Space Telescope.

On his third mission, Bolden became commander of the Space Shuttle Atlantis on the first Space Lab mission dedicated to NASA's Mission to Planet Earth.

His fourth and last command in space, this past February, was the first joint U.S./Russian Space Shuttle mission.

By the end of that mission, Bolden had spent some 680 hours in space and orbited the globe 444 times.

Bolden has received a chest-full of decorations during his military career. Among them are the Distinguished Flying Cross, the Defense Superior Medal, the Air Medal, The Strike/Flight Medal and NASA's Outstanding Leadership Medal and Exceptional Service Medal.

In his new job, Bolden helps formulate and execute Naval Academy policy. He handles the daily operations of the 4,000 member brigade and coordinates and directs the training of brigade officers.

One of Bolden's two children, Anthony, graduated from the Academy last year which gave him particular insights, both as father and as deputy commander, to his new assignment.

"We need to make sure that the young men and women we are sending as officers into the Navy and Marine Corps understand the needs for the basic principles of leadership and the basic practices of any military organization," Bolden has said. "We need to teach them how to lead people and when and how to sacrifice; that one's self comes third on the feeding chain. We need to ensure that everybody who comes through hears the phrase, 'Ship, Shipmate, Self.'"

That sounds like something a good football coach's son might say and what a Distinguished American would say.