AUSTIN, Texas—University of Texas alumnus Cappy R. McGarr (B.A. ’73, B.J. ’75, MBA ’77) received the 2005 DeWitt Carter Reddick Award—one of the College of Communication’s highest awards—during the college’s Honors Day.
“Cappy’s contributions to the business, political and communication worlds and to the university are in a class of their own,” said Dr. Roderick P. Hart, interim dean of the College of Communication. “His broad-based support of the college in such diverse areas as the sports journalism program, the University of Texas Film Institute and the Annette Strauss Institute make it a special pleasure to recognize him in this way.”
McGarr is a partner in InterMedia Partners, a private equity media firm in New York. He is an executive producer of the Kennedy Center’s Mark Twain Prize, the nation’s highest honor for humor, which most recently honored comedy writer and producer Lorne Michaels of “Saturday Night Live.” McGarr was appointed to the board of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. by President Clinton and served from 1996 to 2002.
McGarr is co-chair of the advisory council of the Annette Strauss Institute for Civic Participation and a board member of Burnt Orange Productions, the private, for-profit arm of the University of Texas Film Institute. He has been chairman of The University of Texas Development Board, on the College of Communication advisory council and the executive committee of The University of Texas Commission of 125, a group of citizens convened to express a vision on how the university can best serve Texas and the larger society in the next 25 years.
In 1999, with the vision of establishing a sports journalism program, McGarr anonymously made a significant contribution to the School of Journalism to help develop an area of specialization for students interested in becoming sports journalists. This made The University of Texas one of the first in the country to offer such a program and has helped start the careers of dozens of aspiring sports broadcast and print journalists.
As part of his award presentation to McGarr, Dr. Hart announced the annual McGarr Symposium in Sports Journalism, which will bring notable sports journalists to campus to discuss the interface between the mass media and the world of sport. The first symposium is being planned for fall 2005.
McGarr also serves on the board of the Lyndon Baines Johnson Foundation and the Dallas Symphony Foundation, and is a member of the Board of Trustees of the National Archives Foundation, the World Presidents Organization and the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.
DeWitt Carter Reddick was the first dean of the College of Communication. He also was director of the School of Journalism from 1959 to 1965, teaching thousands of journalism students, including Walter Cronkite, Lady Bird Johnson, Ben Sargent and Karen Elliott House, from 1927 until his retirement in 1975.
Established in 1974, the DeWitt Carter Reddick Award recognizes excellence in the field of communication. Past Reddick Award recipients include: Walter Cronkite, Molly Ivins, Bill Moyers, William S. Paley, William J. Raspberry, Helen Thomas, Ted Turner and Bill Wittliff, among others.
For more information contact: Erin Geisler, College of Communication, 512-475-8071.
