President Joe Biden on Thursday presented the Presidential Citizenship Medal – the nation’s highest civilian honor – to several area people, including Fran Visco, a Bella Vista resident, graduate of Western Catholic High School for Girls and longtime chairwoman of the National Breast Cancer Coalition.
“I’m incredibly honored for myself and everyone in the coalition,” Visco, a breast cancer survivor and the daughter of a registered nurse and a printer, said in a brief interview Thursday morning. Visco (76) is a graduate of the University of St. Joseph and the Charles Widger School of Law at Villanova University, and has served as president of the coalition since 1992.
In 2015, Science magazine stated that Visco “may be the most influential non-scientist in the history of breast cancer research.” The West Philadelphia native came to the attention of the disease after 13 years as a partner at the law firm Cohen Shapiro Polisher Shiekman & Cohen, dedicating herself to leading coalitions, working with activists, survivors, researchers, policymakers and others committed to advocating and supporting breast cancer research .
“We have never been a pink ribbon organization,” Visco said, referring to the universal symbol of breast cancer awareness. “We want society to understand that breast cancer is not soft, pink or pretty.”
In addition to Visco, three more people with regional roots were honored with the Presidential Citizens’ Medal, which was awarded to 20 people from all over the country. These include former U.S. Senator Bill Bradley (D-New Jersey); Louis Lorenzo Redding, the first black lawyer in Delaware; and Collins J. Seitz, who was a judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in Delaware. Both Redding and Seitz were honored posthumously. The awards were presented during a ceremony at the White House on Thursday.
Bradley, a graduate of Princeton University, Olympianand they were basketball player for the New York Knicks, served as New Jersey senator from 1979 to 1997. He was, among others, candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in the 2000 election, losing to Vice President Al Gore. In 2020, he he endorsed Biden and campaigned for him. He has author six books on American politics, culture and economy, and starred in a one-man play he wrote about his life and work, rolling, which became a movie. Bradley sponsored or co-sponsored Senate Acts supporting women’s health, protecting ocean shores and improving support for children, among others.
He grew up in Wilmington and graduated from Howard High School in 1919, according to Redding Redding Consortium for Educational Equity. In 1929, Redding became the first black lawyer in Delaware. In 1950, he won the landmark case that led to the desegregation of the University of Delaware. He also presented the legal arguments that helped lead to the desegregation of schools in Claymont and Hockessin, Del., in the 1950s.
In 1954, Redding was an assistant to Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall in the case of: Brown v. Board of Education a case that overturned the “separate but equal” system of segregation in public schools across the country. He died at the age of 96 in 1998 in Lima, Delaware County.
Seitz, born in Wilmington in 1914 and a graduate of the University of Delaware, served as a senior federal appeals judge judge in the city after being nominated by President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1966. He is credited helps with disassembly the “separate but equal” doctrine, which supported segregation in school systems based on a 1952 court ruling ordering the desegregation of Delaware public schools, a ruling cited in the Supreme Court’s unanimous 1954 decision to end segregation. Seitz died in Wilmington in 1998.
Biden also awarded the medal to Liz Cheney, a former Republican member of Congress from Wyoming who lost her seat after taking a leadership role on the commission investigating the January 6, 2021 insurrection in which she criticized President-elect Donald Trump.
In the fall, Cheney campaigned for Vice President Kamala Harris in suburban Philadelphia.
