Sen. Richard Lugar

The Republican lawmaker and party leader on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee was presented with the award at the 94th National Convention in Indianapolis - the capital of his home state - close to the end of his 36-year Senate career. Lugar was honored for his long and heralded service to veterans and national security, as well as his commitment to bipartisanship.

“What we are most grateful for is Senator Lugar’s work as a leader in reducing the threat of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. In 1991, he forged a bipartisan partnership with then-Senate Armed Services Chairman Sam Nunn of Georgia to destroy these weapons of mass destruction in the former Soviet Union,” National Commander Fang A. Wong said during the presentation. “To date, the Nunn-Lugar program has deactivated more than 7,500 nuclear warheads that were once aimed at the United States.”

Lugar was born in Indianapolis in 1932, received a graduate degree from Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar, and served in the Navy from 1957 to 1960.