Richard Lugar and Sam Nunn

As Printed in 2000 Award Luncheon Program:

Sam Nunn is a senior partner in the Atlanta law firm of King and Spalding. He served as a United States Senator from Georgia from 1972 to 1986.

Senator Nunn attended Georgia Tech, Emory University and Emory Law School, where he graduated with honors in 1962. After active duty service in the U.S. Coast Guard, he served six years in the U.S. Coast Guard Reserve. He first entered politics as a member of the Georgia House of Representatives in 1968.

In the U.S. Senate Senator Nunn served as chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee and the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. He also served on the Intelligence and Small Business Committees. His legislative achievements include the landmark Department of Defense Reorganization Act, drafted with the late Senator Barry Goldwater, and the Cooperative Threat Reduction Program, also known as the Nunn-Lugar program, which provides incentives for the former Soviet republics to dismantle and safely handle their nuclear arsenals.

Senator Nunn currently serves as a distinguished professor in the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs at Georgia Tech, as chairman of the board of the Center for Strategic and International Studies and as co-chairman of the Concord Coalition, a grass-roots organization formed to educate the public on our nation’s fiscal challenges.

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Senator Richard G. Lugar (1932-2019) of Indiana entered the U.S. Senate in 1976 and has just been reelected to his fourth term. Previously he served two terms as Mayor of Indianapolis. Raised on an Indiana farm Senator Lugar continues to actively manage that 604-acre farm. Senator Lugar currently serves as a member of the Senate Foreign Relations and Intelligence Committees. He also serves as chairman of the Agriculture Committee and co-chair of the Senate Arms Control Observer Group.

Starting in 1991, Senators Lugar, and then Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman, Sam Nunn of Georgia, forged a bipartisan alliance aimed at spurring prompt dismantlement and conversion of the post-Cold War Soviet nuclear stockpile. Their legislative and diplomatic efforts helped accelerate the collection and ongoing destruction of the 30,000 tactical nuclear weapons scattered across four newly independent republics and removal of warheads from intercontinental strategic missiles still aimed at the U.S.