Southeast honorary doctorate recipients

RUSH H. LIMBAUGH SR.

The longtime Cape Girardeau lawyer was the first recipient and the only one to be honored posthumously. The honorary doctor of laws degree was bestowed at the spring commencement in May 1996. Limbaugh died a month earlier at the age of 104.

Limbaugh was born in 1891, just 18 years after the founding of Southeast. He attended Southeast Missouri Normal School, now the university, from 1907 until 1912 with the exception of a year as a teacher at the one-room Lone Grove School in Bollinger County.

He studied law at the University of Missouri-Columbia and began practicing law in Cape Girardeau in 1916. He served as legal counsel to Southeast, the city of Cape Girardeau and Southeast Missouri Hospital.

When he was in his 90s, he was recognized as the nation's oldest practicing lawyer.

The citation approved by the university's Board of Regents said Limbaugh wanted to be known as "an honest lawyer who believed in justice."

PAUL SIMON

The former U.S. senator from Illinois received an honorary Doctor of Laws degree at the May 1999 commencement where he also was the main speaker.

Simon, who lives in Makanda, Ill., teaches at Southern Illinois University and directs the Public Policy Institute on the Carbondale campus.

Simon was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1974. He served as a congressman for 10 years.

He won election to the U.S. Senate in 1984. He ran for president, but failed to win the Democratic nomination in 1988. He won re-election to the Senate in 1990, defeating his Republican opponent by nearly 1 million votes.

As a senator, Simon held more than 600 town meetings throughout Illinois, more than any U.S. senator in the state's history.

CLARK TERRY

The famed jazz trumpet player received an honorary Doctor of Letters degree at the December 2000 commencement at the age of 79. He upstaged commencement speaker and then-governor-elect Bob Holden by performing "Mumbles Returns," a song he popularized on "The Tonight Show." The song mixes ensemble jazz with a scat-like vocal performance of nonsense words that sound like a monologue. At the end of his commencement performance, Terry punctuated it with the song's only intelligible words: "pregnant chad."

A native of St. Louis and a versatile flugelhorn player, Terry performed over the years with jazz greats Duke Ellington and Count Basie, as well as "The Tonight Show" with Johnny Carson. He's a member of the Kansas City Jazz Hall of Fame, the St. Louis Walk of Fame and the National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Hall of Fame.

Terry told the graduates last year he was glad to come to Cape Girardeau. "This is my home state and Cape Girardeau is a wonderful town. Why wouldn't I come?"

SHERYL CROW

A Kennett, Mo., native, the rock 'n' roll singer, guitarist and songwriter will receive a Doctor of Letters at Saturday's commencement ceremony at the Show Me Center. She also will deliver the commencement address.

Crow learned to play the piano by age 6 and wrote her first song when she was 13.

A University of Missouri-Columbia graduate, she briefly worked as an elementary school music teacher. At the age of 23, fueled with a few thousand dollars in savings, she moved to Los Angeles determined to be a professional musician.

She worked as backup singer for such talents as Eric Clapton, George Harrison, Rod Stewart and Michael Jackson. Her debut recording was released in 1993.

Since then, she has garnered numerous major music honors, including several Grammy awards.