Transcripts

[BOB DYLAN, "BLOWIN' IN THE WIND"] How many roads must a man walk down before you call him a man? How many seas must the white dove sail before she sleeps in the sand?

SPEAKER: The unmistakable sound of Minnesota native Bob Dylan, who was among a dozen people honored today at the White House by President Barack Obama. Dylan received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor. Dylan was the only recipient to wear dark sunglasses while the president was hanging the medal around his neck. Obama said Dylan's music had a strong influence on his own life.

BARACK OBAMA: Bob Dylan started out singing other people's songs, but as he says, "There came a point where I had to write what I wanted to say because what I wanted to say, nobody else was writing." So born in Hibbing, Minnesota, a town, he says, where you couldn't be a rebel. It was too cold.

[LAUGHTER]

Bob moved to New York at age 19. By the time, he was 23, Bob's voice with its weight, its unique, gravely power, was redefining not just what music sounded like, but the message it carried and how it made people feel. Today, everybody from Bruce Springsteen to U2 owes Bob a debt of gratitude.

There is not a bigger giant in the history of American music. All these years later, he's still chasing that sound, still searching for a little bit of truth. And I have to say that I am a really big fan.

[LAUGHTER]

SPEAKER: President Obama speaking at the White House today, someone should be fact checking the president. While Bob Dylan was raised in Hibbing, he was born in Duluth. Other recipients of the Presidential Medal of Honor included retired Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, the nation's first female Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, former astronaut and Senator John Glenn, and another citizen with ties to our region, John Doar, who was born in Minneapolis and raised in nearby Richmond, Wisconsin.

The civil rights attorney from New Richmond, Wisconsin, worked in the Department of Justice and guided the Kennedy administration in the '60s. The president said today, "Fair to say, I would not be here were it not for his work." And you can see more about Dylan and Doar's legacies online at mprnews.org.

[BOB DYLAN, "THE TIMES THEY'RE A-CHANGIN'"] The order is rapidly fading and the first one now will later be last for the times they are a-changin'.