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| John Denver gained an international reputation as a singer and composer. His music reflected the conscience of a concerned citizen, a man working for the improvement of the quality of life for all people -- environmentally, politically and socially. In 1978, Denver was named to serve as a member of the Presidential Commission on World and Domestic Hunger. He was one of the five founders of the Hunger Project and to Unicef, he was a member of a fact-finding delegation which toured African countries hit hard by drought and starvation. In 1985, John Denver was awarded the Presidential World Without Hunger Award, conferred by President Ronald Reagan, for "vision, initiative and leadership in the effort to achieve a world without hunger." Denver's conviction that "we can end hunger in our lifetime" was an often repeated theme in his speeches and at his concerts. In 1986 Denver was designated a United Nations Goodwill Ambassador by U.N. High Commissioner Jean-Pierre Hocke at Refugee '86 Gala, a fund-raising telethon for refugees. In 1987, Denver sent | ||
| letters
to Mikhail Gorbachev, Ronald Reagan and Pope John Paul II proposing a
possible
way to wind down the arms race. Called "The One Percent Solution",
Denver's
proposal asked that "the United States and Soviet Union each take one
percent
of their defense budget and begin to invest it in programs at home that
can create jobs, clean up the environment, increase productivity, and
at
the same time support programs in Africa and elsewhere that are
beginning
to make a dent in the obscenity of hunger and starvation in our world."
Denver's social and political interests covered a wide spectrum. He was a member of the National Space Institute, Save the Children, the Cousteau Society, Friends of the Earth, the Human/Dolphin Foundation, and European Space Agency, to name but a few. In addition, Denver was co-founder of and initially funded the Windstar Foundation, an educational project exploring healthful and balanced solutions to crucial contemporary issues through the integration of earth, mind and spirit. Besides that he also founded Plant-It 2000, a remarkably successful environmental organization, which planted several hundred thousand trees all around the world in the last few years. The articulate John Denver has spoken before many prestigious colleges and universities in the United States, as well as the National Press club in Washington, D.C. In 1977, he was selected as the Poet Laureate of Colorado by the People's Choice Award. One of his highest honors was being chosen in 1982 for the Carl Sandburg People's Poet Award. He also trained his skills as a writer. In 1994 he released his autobiography, Take Me Home, which was co-written with Arthur Tobier. Another of Denver's interests was photography. Stating that photography is a way to communicate a feeling, John made his debut in 1980 as a photographer at the fashionable Hammer Galleries in Manhattan. The show, featuring photographs taken from the Caribbean to Rome, was well-received and served as a benefit fundraiser for the Windstar Foundation. John's cameras travelled the world with him, capturing faces, scenery and moments both unusual and familiar. His photography was a further expression of a unique artistic talent. |
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