One was the No. 1 female tennis player in the world.Another was the first African-American pro football coach.Another is a leading heart surgeon.Another designed the presidential center building for Bill Clinton.One sang with Duke Ellington and yet another was the head football coach at Notre Dame.They are the people who will be honored Saturday in the inaugural Summit Awards sponsored by the Summit County Historical Society.“The Summit Awards are presented to distinguished past and present residents of Akron and Summit County who have been recognized nationally for inspirational accomplishment and whose life stories continue to impact our community,” said Leianne Neff Heppner, executive director of the society.The awards will become an annual event, and the back gallery of the John Brown House will be the site where the recipients will be recognized in photographs and with videos, she said. Ultimately, a portion of the Brown home will be used for research and recording stories of Summit County residents.The event’s honorary chairman, who is also one of the recipients, is Dr. W. Gerald Austen, an Akron native and a world-renowned heart surgeon.Since 1974, Austen has been the Edward D. Churchill professor of surgery at Harvard Medical School. From 1969 to 1997, Austen was chief of surgical services at Massachusetts General Hospital. He is the former president of the American College of Surgeons, the American Association for Thoracic Surgery, the American Surgical Association and the Massachusetts and American Heart associations.Another honoree is Shirley Fry Irvin, 84, who honed her tennis skills in Akron and became the world’s No. 1 women’s tennis player in 1956. During her career, she became one of only 16 players to win all four Grand Slam tournaments.Her father owned a tennis shop on East Exchange Street and Irvin first played tennis on a squash court at Annunciation Catholic Church in East Akron. She now lives in Florida and will attend the event.“I am honored to be in the group,” said Irvin, the mother of four and grandmother of 12. “I did well in my profession and I take it other people did well in their profession.”She said she played when at a time when no money was awarded to those who won tennis tournaments. “It was all amateur,” said Irvin, who was a member of the Akron Central High School Class of 1945. “If you got a voucher, it would have to be spent on something pertaining to tennis, like a tennis sweater.”Other recipients of the Summit Award are:• John S. and James L. Knight, the late founders of the Knight Newspaper chain, which became Knight Ridder, former parent of the Akron Beacon Journal. The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation has given $1.2 billion in grants.• Lewis Miller, who lived from 1829 to 1899, held patents and ran several businesses. He was the co-founder of the Chautauqua Institute in New York and developed the Akron Sunday School Plan.• Dolores Parker Morgan, an area resident who sang with Duke Ellington in the 1940s.• Ara Parseghian, an Akron native who is being recognized for his humanitarian efforts in funding research on Niemann-Pick disease. He was head football coach at Miami (Ohio) University, Northwestern and Notre Dame. Parseghian is unable to attend the ceremony.• Frederick Douglass “Fritz” Pollard, who died in 1986 at the age of 92. Pollard was the first African-American pro football coach when he guided the Akron Pros, the first winner of the NFL Championship in 1920. He was also the league’s second black player. He was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2005. Pollard’s grandson, Dr. Stephen Towns, a dentist from Indianapolis, will attend to accept his grandfather’s award.• James Stewart Polshek, an Akron native and architect who designed the National Inventors Hall of Fame, the William J. Clinton Presidential Center in Little Rock, Ark., and the Newseum in Washington. Polshek is scheduled to attend.Heppner said the recipients “are all interesting people who spent time in Akron” and were chosen “because they’ve done great things” and are “people with national significance.”Heppner said the event will be the historical society’s largest fundraiser of the year. The idea of the Summit Awards came from Rich Comstock, board president for the historical society. A selection committee has compiled a list of about 90 people who could be recognized in the future.Heppner said the goal of the historical society is to make sure stories of residents of Summit County are preserved.“People don’t think their stories are important, but they are and we need to make sure they know their story is important,” she said. “If we can capture these pieces of information, I think it will be helpful in the future.”Award recipients will receive original artwork by artists Michael Martell and Claudia Zeber-Martell.Tickets for the event, which begins at 6 p.m. at Greystone Hall at 103 S. High St. in Akron, are $50, $100 and $150.For information, go to www.TheSummitAwards.org. For more about the historical society, go to www.summit
history.org. To nominate someone for the Summit Awards, call 330-535-1120 or e mail schs@summithistory.org.Jim Carney can be reached at 330-996-3576 or jcarney@thebeaconjournal.com.