By Maddie Orton
Arts Correspondent
Asbury Park’s Convention Hall was a-buzz last night. New Jersey Hall of Fame rolled out the red carpet for its 2014 inductees.
Sopranos stars paid tribute to the late, great James Gandolfini.
“A very self-effacing, humble, really humble man of the people,” said ceremony host Vincent Curatola, “Johnny Sacks” on The Sopranos. “And I have a strange feeling that, if Jim were with us in the flesh tonight, he’d probably say, ‘What are you doing? Go home.’”
NBC Nightly News’s Brian Williams was introduced by a surprise guest—a fellow shore native and his music idol.
“To paraphrase a friend of mine, if Walter Cronkite and Jon Stewart had a baby, and due to the ongoing controversy over same-sex marriage had to abandon that baby on the New Jersey Turnpike, and it grew up to be a news anchor, its name would be Brian Douglas Williams,” said Garden State icon Bruce Springsteen.
“I was, as I confessed the first time I met Bruce, a full-on stalker,” said Williams of Springsteen. “If I had known back then that I would have hang time, friendship time, with this man, I could’ve saved so much money in beer looking for him.”
The Hall of Fame’s class of 2014 also includes: legendary Knicks Center Patrick Ewing; Howard Katz, COO of NFL Films; chef and organic food activist Alice Waters, and former Governor Jim Florio.
Prominent figures from the state’s history were also inducted into the Hall of Fame: Peter J. McGuire, known as ‘The Father of Labor Day”; Women’s Rights Movement leader Elizabeth Cady Stanton; and humorist, poet, critic, screenwriter and activist Dorothy Parker.
E Street Band drummer Max Weinberg honored jazz great Dizzy Gillespie, and beloved girl group The Shirelles were introduced by fellow Hall of Famer Dionne Warwick.
It’s not just household names who are honored. Holocaust survivor and educator Maude Dahme received the annual Unsung Hero Award. Hall of Fame Foundation President Steven Edwards said: “The only way to prevent it from happening again is to talk about it, and that’s what she’s taken the time to do for so many years. And we’re very grateful.”
Gratitude was a theme of the night—especially among those being honored by their home state.
“I’m just a kid. I grew up a hundred years from Route 35 behind a furniture store,” said Brian Williams. “I kind of can’t believe this is all happening.”
Only time will tell who next year’s inductees will be, but Edwards says there’s never a lack of accomplished New Jerseyians to choose from.