Samuel Ullman Award

Samuel Ullman Bio

Samuel Ullman was born in Germany in 1840. At the age of eleven, he and his family moved to the United States and settled in Mississippi. In 1884, Ullman moved to the young city of Birmingham, Alabama, and was immediately placed on the city's first board of education.

During his eighteen years of service, he advocated educational benefits for black children similar to those provided for whites. In addition to his numerous community activities, Ullman also served as president and then lay rabbi of the city's reform congregation at Temple Emanu-El. 

In his retirement, he wrote a poetic essay entitled “Youth.” It was General Douglas MacArthur who facilitated Ullman's popularity as a poet - he hung a framed copy of a version of Ullman's poem "Youth" on the wall of his office in Tokyo and often quoted from the poem in his speeches. Through MacArthur's influence, the people of Japan discovered "Youth" and became curious about the poem's author.

"Youth"

Samuel Ullman

Youth is not a time of life; it is a state of mind; it is not a matter of rosy cheeks, red lips and supple knees; it is a matter of the will, a quality of the imagination, a vigor of the emotions; it is the freshness of the deep springs of life.

Youth means a temperamental predominance of courage over timidity of the appetite, for adventure over the love of ease. This often exists in a man of sixty more than a boy of twenty. Nobody grows old merely by a number of years. We grow old by deserting our ideals.

Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul. Worry, fear, self-distrust bows the heart and turns the spirit back to dust.

Whether sixty or sixteen, there is in every human being’s heart the lure of wonder, the unfailing child-like appetite of what’s next, and the joy of the game of living. In the center of your heart and my heart there is a wireless station; so long as it receives messages of beauty, hope, cheer, courage and power from men and from the infinite, so long are you young.

When the aerials are down, and your spirit is covered with snows of cynicism and the ice of pessimism, then you are grown old, even at twenty, but as long as your aerials are up, to catch the waves of optimism, there is hope you may die young at eighty.

青春

原作 サミュエル・ウルマン　翻訳 岡田 義夫

青春とは人生のある期間をいうのではなく、心の様相をいうのだ。

すぐれた創造力、たくましき意志、炎ゆる情熱怯懦をしりぞける勇猛心、
容易をふりすてる冒険心
こういう様相を青春というのだ。
年を重ねただけでは人は老いない。

理想を失うときにはじめて老いがくる。
歳月は皮膚のしわを増すが、情熱をう失う時に精神はしぼむ。

苦悶や、狐疑や、不安、恐怖、失望、
こういうものこそ、あたかも長年月のごとく人を老いさせ、
精気ある魂をも芥に帰せしめてしまう。

年は七十であろうと十六であろうと、その胸中に抱き得るものはなにか。
いわく驚異への愛慕心、空にきらめく星辰、その輝きにも似たる
事物や思想に対する欽仰、事に処する剛毅な挑戦、
小児のごとく求めてやまぬ探求心、人生への歓喜と興味。

人は信念とともに若く、疑惑とともに老ゆる。
人は自信とともに若く、恐怖とともに老ゆる。
希望ある限り若く、失望とともに老い朽ちる。

大地より、神より、人より、美と喜悦、勇気と壮大、
そして偉力の霊感を受ける限り、人は若さを失わない。
これらの霊感が絶え、悲歎の白雪が人の心の奥までもおおいつくし、
皮肉の厚氷がこれを固くとざすに至れば、
この時にこそ人はまったくに老いて、神の憐れみを乞うるほかはなくなる。

Past Samuel Ullman Award Recipients

1992 – Mr. Akio Morita, Sony Corporation

1993 – His Excellency Kazuo Chiba, Ambassador of Japan to Great Britain

1994 – Mr. Osamu Uno, Chairman of Kansai Economic Federation

1995 – General (Ret.) Mikio Kimata, Japan Self-Defense Forces

1995 – Mr. Charles Todd, Intermarko

1996 – Mr. Kenji Awakura, JVC America

1996 – Mr. Marrion Rambeau, Honorary Consul General

1997 – Mr. Kazunori Tago, Dainichi Kensetsu, Builder of Japanese Tea House

1997 – Mr. Joe Blackburn, Sirote & Permutt

1998 – Dr. Ichiro Miyagawa, University of Alabama

1998 – Mr. Elmer Harris, Alabama Power Company

1999 – Dr. Yumi Akimoto, Mitsubishi Materials Corporation

2000 – Mr. David Naito, Daikin America

2000 – Mr. Fred Denton, Denton & Associates

2002 – Mr. Hisashi Yamada, Urasenke Chanoyu Society

2002 – Ms. Margaret Armbrester, University of Alabama at Birmingham

2003 – Dr. Malcolm Portera, University of Alabama System

2003 – Mr. Kozo Ogi, State of Alabama Japan Office

2004 – Honda Manufacturing of Alabama (accepted by Mr. Masaaki Kato)

2004 – Mr. Larry Doss, Coilplus

2005 – Ms. Taeko Horwitz, Japan Saturday Schools in Alabama

2005 – Mr. Mike Gillespie, Madison County Commission

2006 – Japan External Trade Organization (accepted by Mr. Hirokazu Yamaoka)

2006 – Tuscaloosa Sister Cities Commission (accepted by Ms. Lisa Keyes)

2007 – Dr. Ryoji Chubachi, Sony Corporation

2007 – Ms. Hilda Lockhart, Alabama Development Office

2008 – Honorable Shoji Ogawa, Consul General of Japan in Atlanta

2008 – Dr. Marilyn Emplaincourt, University of Alabama

2009 – Mr. Satoshi Kakuda, State of Alabama Japan Office

2009 – Mr. Brian Hilson, Chamber of Commerce of Huntsville/Madison County

2010 – Dr. Nobuaki Tamagawa, formerly of Sony Corporation (accepted by Mr. Kengo Saito)

2010 – Mr. Douglas Moore, DMC Partnership Award (accepted by Ms. Susan Moore)

2011 – Daikin America (accepted by Mr. Forrest Keith)

2011 – Mr. David Echols, Alabama Development Office (accepted by Ms. Cynthia Echols)

2012 – Mr. Fred Spicer, Birmingham Botanical Gardens

2012 – Mr. Kozo Matsuda, ARCUS Services

2013 – Mr. Charles Wood, Charles Wood Japanese Garden

2014 – Toyota Motor Manufacturing Alabama (accepted by Mr. Jim Bolte)

2015 – Mr. Lamar Smith, JASA Past President

2015 – Mr. Kazuo Moriya, Hayashi Telempu North America

2016 – Mr. Wyatt Haskell

2017 – Mr. Mark Jackson, Honorary Consul General of Japan

2018 – Mr. Scotty Colson, The Jimmie Hale Mission

2019 – Mayor William Bell, City of Birmingham, Alabama

2019 – Mayor Ryu Yamamoto, City of Maebashi, Japan

2022 – Mr. Ed Castile, AIDT

2023 – Mr. Robert Black, North Alabama Japanese Garden

2023 – Mrs. Linda T. Roberson, Birmingham City Schools-Retired