AEF Presents New Logo

October 11, 2019

We are excited to present the new American Eagle Foundation logo!

In the past year, the American Eagle Foundation began repositioning itself as a dynamic force in wildlife conservation. With a new Executive Director at the helm, investment in internal infrastructure and a calibration of vision, AEF is poised to achieve a lasting impact in its new mission pillars of Conservation, Education and Rehabilitation. Though the return of bald eagles to our skies is a tremendous conservation success story, threats to natural habitats continue to plague all birds of prey.

In this new logo, Challenger fittingly serves as the centerpiece. His inclusion pays homage to past logos, honoring both his legacy and his innumerable contributions to bald eagle conservation. Combined with modern, crisp and approachable elements, this logo echoes our very first logo in one important way: Challenger’s beak is opened wide, mid triumphant call.  His cry serves as a call to action.

Challenger’s call warns us that bald eagles—and all birds of prey—are still subject to widespread persecution, death by pollutants and poisons, and loss of habitat. In June 2019, the American Eagle Foundation announced American Eagle Day 2020, a national take-action event focused on protecting our wildlife habitats and the birds of prey who call them home. Please join us on June 20, 2020 to take part in this habitat clean up initiative, ensuring that Challenger’s cry and the calls of all birds of prey, continue to echo throughout our skies!  Visit americaneagleday.org to learn more.

Special acknowledgements:

Artistic Imagery: Spencer Williams

Logo Design: Aaron Barnhart

Challenger Invited to White House to Celebrate Resurgence of American’s National Symbol

On July 2, 1999, Bald Eagle Challenger was an invited guest at the South Lawn of the White House as President Clinton announced plans to remove our nation’s National Symbol from the endangered species list.

AEF Founder Al Cecere, Bald Eagle Challenger, and President Bill Clinton at the South Lawn of the White House, July 2, 1999.

Independence Day was only 2 days away, and President Clinton used this occasion to mark a landmark in the ongoing struggle to preserve wildlife.  He wanted Congress to approve a $1 billion Lands Legacy initiative which would preserve critical wildlife habitats and fund permanent financing for green spaces across the country.

Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt was on hand to praise the Endangered Species Act which had helped to bring back the Bald Eagle, and continued to protect threatened wildlife.

Frank Gill, the Director of Science at the National Audubon Society, stated that “the recovery of the Bald Eagle was one of the biggest conservation successes of the 20th century.”

PRESIDENT CLINTON’S REMARKS (CSPAN VIDEO)

A transcription of the video, interspersed with a few screenshots.

Note: some screen shots are from the CSPAN video; others are from “Endangered Species” a video produced for the Earth Conservation Corps documenting their efforts to clean up the Anacostia River and bring back the Bald Eagle. Footage in “Endangered Species” also includes their visit to the White House as guests of President Clinton to recognize their contributions to their community and their efforts on behalf of the Bald Eagle.

Speech by Clinton at South Lawn of White House July 2, 1999

 Opening remarks on video:

 Earlier today, President Clinton announced that the American Bald Eagle is being removed from the Endangered Species list. The President also used the occasion to call on Congress to approve an initiative to help protect wildlife habitats and threatened species.

 He was joined on the South Lawn of the White House by Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt and others.

 [Challenger chirps, Ruffles & Flourishes, President Announced]

Ladies and Gentlemen: The President of the United States, accompanied by Interior Secretary, Bruce Babbitt; Mr. Lavar Simms; Bald Eagle Recovery Coordinator, Jody Millar; and AmeriCorps members serving with the Earth Conservation Corps.

Bruce Babbitt Speaks:

This is a wonderful American holiday and you are going to hear and participate today in a wonderful and moving American story. It’s a story about eagles; it’s a story about endangered species; it is a story about people and the human spirit. The person I want you to meet, to introduce our President, his name: Lavar Simms. He grew up in Anacostia, and along the way was recruited into the Earth Conservation Corps, into a group called—appropriately enough—the Eagle Corps, which is a part of the President’s AmeriCorps program. And out of this partnership between people and pledge, has come an extraordinary project to restore the Anacostia River, right in our own community, to bring the eagles back and to watch as these wonderful people restore the waters, to watch the waters restoring and educating and developing these wonderful people. To tell you the story and to introduce our President, I’d like to invite Lavar Simms to the podium.

Lavar Simms Speaks:

Thank you so much, Mr. Secretary. It is very thrilling to be here and to see all your wonderful faces. It is wonderful to be here. Wow, this is so exciting! Bear with me here. As the Secretary mentioned, my name is Lavar, I’m 21 years of age, and I grew up in the Ellen Wilson projects about a mile from here. I have a 2-year-old son and he is also going to be officially of the AmeriCorps. When I first joined the Earth Conservation Corps and the AmeriCorps, I knew nothing about the environment. But I did know that I wanted to improve myself and my community.

Today I’d like to share with you a little bit about what the Bald Eagle means to me. Since I was born—many, many years ago—the last pair of Bald Eagles had abandoned the Anacostia River. This beautiful river right in my backyard and also the nation’s capital. The river became too polluted for the eagles to feed their young.

Mr. President, remember the coal miners who took their canaries into the mines to warn them when there was danger? Well those birds were our canaries, but we didn’t listen. So the river became so polluted that we couldn’t even fish or swim in the river. And neglect to my neighborhood, which soon became a dumping ground [unclear].

We were honored when the US Fish & Wildlife Service allowed us to try to return the Bald Eagle to the Anacostia. A nest was built at the National Arboretum and each year we received 4 baby eagles from Wisconsin, which would have died without us. We fed the Eagles twice a day and watch them grow. When we released the eagles to the wild, they made it. People thought we were doing it for the eagles, but for us, it was a lot more.

Mr. President, I think you might know during our 4-year eagle effort, we got to name 6 eagles after Corp members that were murdered. Last year, we named one bird “LB” after Leroy Brown. Leroy Brown was a very special friend to me. He was a Corp member and part of my family. For eight weeks I nurtured, fed, and got to know this eaglet. Releasing LB made me think about life and what it means to be endangered.

This Corp believes that everyone should have a clean, wonderful, beautiful river for the eagles and people to fish. That’s why we worked so hard to clean the Anacostia. What I’ve learned from working with the birds is that we should give life a chance. It’s a tough world. This program has opened my eyes and taught me to make the best of everything you do. Just don’t quit and don’t give up. Thanks to you, Mr. President, and your AmeriCorps program, I was giving back to my community. I can teach the young people things that I know about the Anacostia. Thanks to you, Mr. President, I’ve earned my AmeriCorps scholarship. I’m going far. I’m currently enrolled in my community college. My role in this is key and my dream is to become a successful accountant. I’m proud to even go back to the Anacostia. Now I can teach my son—[unclear] Look, son, there’s a Bald Eagle! That wasn’t here a few years ago. They were almost done.

Mr. President, it’s a great honor to introduce you as we begin to celebrate our Nation’s independence and return our Symbol of Freedom. Thank you, Mr. President, for a wonderful opportunity and for having the Earth Conservation Corp here today. Ladies and Gentlemen, the President of the United States, Mr. William Jefferson Clinton.

President Clinton’s Speech:

Thank you very much. I have to say, I was very moved by that. Let’s give him another hand and all these young people here.

Thank you, Lavar, and thank you members of the Earth Conservation Corp. I’d like to thank all the adults and sponsors who are herewith them here today. One strong supporter of this program who is not here, my good friend Ethyl Kennedy. I thank her and all of you for what you have done to give these young people a chance to contribute to the conservation of their community and to earn some money to go on with their education. I’d like to thank Secretary Babbitt for his outstanding leadership in this regard. He’s been a wonderful, wonderful steward of our nation’s fish and wildlife and natural resources over these last 6 ½ years, and I’m grateful for that. I’d like to thank George [Unclear] who works on these issues for us in the White House, Jody Millar, the recovery coordinator for Fish & Wildlife Services. I’d like to recognize in her absence Jamie Clark, the director of Fish & Wildlife Service, who I believe is absent because she’s about to have a baby, which is a good way to support species preservation. I’d like to thank Al Cecere and the great eagle Challenger who are here. They look very good here today together, and I thank them for coming.

This is a special day for us to be having this announcement, because we’re about to enter the weekend to commemorate the very last Independence Day of this century. Yesterday, Hillary and I joined a number of people at our National Archives to celebrate this Fourth of July with a renewed effort to give a special gift to America in the new millennium—the preservation of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights.

Today we honor the living symbol of our democracy, the American Bald Eagle. It was, in fact, on July 4, 1776, the very day the Declaration of Independence was signed, that our founders first considered the question of a fitting emblem for our nation. Believe it or not, Ben Franklin wanted our national symbol to be a turkey. The press would be having a field day with that till the present day, wouldn’t they? Fortunately, in this case, Mr. Franklin, who had a lot of good ideas, had this referred to committee—three committees, in fact. And finally, six years later, the Continental Congress approved the design for the Great Seal of the United States—a proud Bald Eagle. Wings stretched wide —an olive branch in one claw; 13 arrows in the other. “A free spirit,” said Thomas Jefferson, “high soaring and courageous.”

Yet, years later, even as his likeness was known world over in the very symbol of our might and our independence, here in America the eagle struggled barely to survive. At our nation’s founding, as many as half a million Bald Eagles soared the skies in North America. Two hundred years later, only a few hundred breeding pairs remained in the lower 48 states. Our majestic eagle was slipping toward extinction.

You just heard Lavar’s story about Washington D.C. in the Anacostia. The American people decided to do something about it. First, we banned the pesticide, DDT, which had poisoned the eagles’ fragile eggs. The naysayers said if we did so, it would wreck the economy. And, as we had seen before then, and time and again since, the people who say improving the environment will wreck the economy are wrong. We’ve done reasonably well with the economy while we’ve brought the Bald Eagle back.

But banning DDT was only the first step. People all across our nation banded together to guard nest sites; to nurse injured birds, like our friend Challenger here, back to health. And, like Lavar and all of his young colleagues who are with us here today, to reintroduce eagles in places where they had long ago disappeared. Most important of all, we made the Endangered Species Act the law of the land, declaring that extinction is not an option. Not for the eagle; not for other creatures put here by God.

Thanks to these efforts, the Bald Eagle is now back from the brink, thriving in virtually every state of the Union. When I became President, I’m proud to say my state had the second largest number of Bald Eagles in the country, but now they are everywhere, and we are very, very happy about it!

Today I am pleased to announce that the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service is taking the first step to remove the Bald Eagle from the Endangered Species List. It’s hard to think of a better way to celebrate the birth of a nation than to celebrate the rebirth of our national symbol. The return of the Bald Eagle is a fitting cap to a century of environmental stewardship, charted for us at the beginning by one of our greatest conservationists, President Theodore Roosevelt. I am proud of what we have tried to do to fulfill his legacy: from the Yellowstone, to California’s ancient redwoods, to the Mojave Desert, to the spectacular Red Rock Canyon of Utah. Just yesterday, Vice President Gore announced the largest environmental restoration effort in history: our plan to save the precious Florida Everglades.

In all these efforts, we honor Teddy Roosevelt’s ideal of leaving our nation even a better land for our descendants than it is for us. Now, on the threshold of a new century, at a moment of unparalleled prosperity, we have an historic opportunity to deepen our commitment to conservation and to make it permanent.

The balanced budget I propose for the coming year includes one billion dollars for a land legacy initiative—the largest annual investment ever proposed for the protection of America’s land. This initiative would expand our efforts to preserve critical wildlife habitats and other national treasures. It would provide new assistance to communities to protect farms, city parks, and other local green spaces. In addition, I have also proposed guaranteed funding of one billion dollars a year, every year, to sustain these efforts into the new century.

I was disappointed earlier this week committees in both the House and the Senate voted to cut deeply into this request in the coming year, including funds to help to keep other wildlife from becoming endangered in the first place. All through our century we have found ways to pull together across party lines to stand up for the environment, the wildlife of our national heritage. I hope we can do that again.

It took all Americans to save the Bald Eagle. People in areas where you would expect the Bald Eagle and people in places where we had forgotten the Bald Eagle ever existed—like Washington, D.C. Now that we have the Bald Eagle back, let’s get the spirit behind the Bald Eagle back and put America back on a bipartisan American course of conservation of our natural resources.

You know, when Hillary talked to me about starting this Millennium Project and devoting this year and next year to giving gifts to the country for the new Millennium – she came up with this phrase: “Honor the past and imagine the future.” More than any other area, the environment and dealing with our natural resources gives us the chance to do both things at the same time. By saving the Bald Eagle and bringing it back home to the nation’s capital, these young people have honored our past. They have also imagined the future in which we give all of our children a chance to get a good education and to have a good income in a thriving economy where we no longer destroy our natural resources, but instead, build them up — it is the past and it must be the future. Thank you very, very much.

###

After President Clinton concluded his speech, he greeted the youth from the Earth Conservation Corp, applauded the band that had played stirring patriotic music, and shook hands with Al Cecere and Jody Millar.

(Following photos are screen shots from CSPAN video.)

In reaching behind Challenger to shake hands with some of the youth from the AmeriCorps who were there, Challenger took issue with Clinton’s outstretched hand. No damage was done, and President Clinton took Challenger’s rebuff in good spirit. See photo sequence!

Challenger Flies At Paralympic Opening Ceremony in Atlanta – 1996

April 30, 2019

On August 16, 1996, athletes with disabilities – coming from 127 countries – gathered in Olympic Stadium in Atlanta, GA for the opening ceremonies of the 1996 Paralympics.

The Olympics had just ended, and over 60,000 enthusiastic fans gathered once again to see 3,500 athletes competing in Atlanta’s second round of competition—including Vice President Al Gore and the president of the International Olympic Committee, Juan Antonio Samaranch.

Other celebrities participated in the pageantry as well: Christopher Reeve was master of ceremonies, while Teddy Pendergrass performed The Star Spangled Banner. Other celebrities included Aretha Franklin, Carly Simon, Liza Minnelli, and Hall & Oates.

A new star would debut in Olympic Stadium that day: a Bald Eagle named Challenger.

After an earlier audition prior to the Paralympics, Challenger was invited to participate in the Opening Ceremonies.

Al Cecere, founder of the American Eagle Foundation, coordinated all facets of Challenger’s flight to the tiniest detail, resulting in a flawless performance! At the end of the oval-shaped 80,000-seat stadium, from the top of the Olympic Torch, Jim Heptinstall, a staff member of the American Eagle Foundation, released Challenger. Pete McManus, another AEF staffer, caught Challenger as he landed perfectly on the glove, just after circling a flag pole with a U.S. flag blowing in the wind. This would be Challenger’s longest flight in distance that he ever made, and it was his first free-flight into an open stadium.

Participating in the 1996 Paralympics was an important milestone in Challenger’s career, and he would go on to become the most famous Bald Eagle in the world.

At approximately 4 minutes 11 seconds into the following video, you will see Challenger fly into the stadium and land on Pete McManus’ glove.

Challenger’s First Major League Free Flight – Atlanta Braves Home Opener April 4, 1997

Bald Eagle Challenger turns 30 in April, 2019. He has been an educational ambassador for over 20 years, flying in stadiums all across our nation. Each of the events has been special, and there are countless photos and write-ups that have appeared in magazines and newspapers whenever Challenger flew.

But there had to be a FIRST TIME for Challenger to fly in a major league baseball stadium, with tens of thousands of people watching as our National Bird flew majestically overhead during the National Anthem.

Challenger’s First Time came on the night of April 4, 1997.  The Atlanta Braves – the hottest baseball team of the 90s – had a new stadium, Turner Field, and this was their home opener! To honor the occasion, many celebrities were on hand, including former President Jimmy Carter and his wife Rosalynn, the Governor of Georgia, Zell Miller, and Hank Aaron—the greatest home-run hitter of all time!

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution had a huge write-up about this event on April 5. There was electricity in the air as a “roaring sellout crowd of 45,044” stood on its feet to welcome Hank Aaron into the arena. Hank was carrying the home plate from Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium into the new Turner Field. The scoreboard turned the clock back to 1974 and replayed Aaron’s home run that broke Babe Ruth’s record.  Tom Glavine, star pitcher for the Braves, greeted Hank at home plate and together they placed the old home plate over the new one.

As stated in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

“Aaron’s appearance was nearly upstaged minutes later by Challenger, a Bald Eagle that drifted from the $1 skyline seats in the upper deck over right field, swooped over the dugout, circled the infield and alighted on the wrist of its handler [Al Cecere], who stood on home plate. The bird preened as wild applause erupted”.

PHOTOS OF THE EVENT

All credit to the Atlanta Braves Archives Department for locating these photos and then graciously allowing us to reprint them on our website! Special thanks to Sam Wallace, Ballpark Tours/Braves Heritage and Hall of Fame; and to Katie Hearn, Coordinator, Digital & Assessable Services.
Challenger lands on Al Cecere’s glove following a specular flight during the National Anthem. Photo ©Braves Baseball Archives.

Challenger’s first major league appearance went perfectly! Photo © Braves Baseball Archives.

Al presents Challenger to an enthusiastic crowd at Turner Field. Photo: ©Braves Baseball Archives.

A star-studied lineup of baseball’s best players greets Challenger and Al. Players shown include (from far right) Ryan Klesko, John Smoltz, Keith Lockhart, & Mark Woolers. Photo: ©Braves Baseball Archives.

Challenger Thanks the Horatio Alger Association for 15 Years of Support

2019 marked Challenger’s 15th year of involvement in the Horatio Alger Awards! It’s an honor to work with such a prestigious and generous organization!

On April 4–6, 2019, 13 distinguished individuals were presented with the Horatio Alger Award and inducted as lifetime Members of the Horatio Alger Association. Concurrently, the newest class of Horatio Alger National Scholars from the United States and Canada will be recognized for their perseverance and determination in spite of significant adversities.

The National Scholars Program was created in 1984 to help American high school seniors who had overcome adversity to attend college. Over time the Horatio Alger Association has expanded the program. Every year, the association awards more than 100 National scholarships to students from every U.S. state and Puerto Rico. Grants received by these National Scholars are valued at $25,000 each. Recipients are also given an all-expenses-paid trip to Washington, D.C. where they meet association members, attend the Horatio Alger Awards Ceremony, and learn about the federal government and the American free enterprise system.  Since its inception in 1984, the program has awarded more than $125 million in college scholarships

Challenger didn’t fly this year, but WOWED the crowd as he soared through DAR Constitution Hall in 2017! Enjoy the video!