2009 Honorary Award Recipients

  • Jack & Sara Nelson-Pallmeyer

    Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer, M.Div., is a nationally recognized teacher, writer, public speaker and activist academic whose life and work over the past 30 years has focused on addressing the political, economic, faith and foreign policy dimensions of hunger and poverty. He is a graduate of St. Olaf College, where he majored In political science. He earned a master of divinity degree from Union Theological Seminary in New York City. His master’s thesis was on the topic of world poverty and was the basis for his first book, Hunger for Justice: The Politics of Food and Faith. He is the author of numerous articles and a dozen books on hunger, poverty, U.S. foreign policy, the historical Jesus and problems of God and violence, some of which have been used by progressive social change movements in this country and throughout the world.

    From 1977 to 1981, Jack served as national program coordinator of the Politics of Food Program with Clergy & Laity Concerned, and directed the Minnesota-based Hunger and Justice Project for the American Lutheran Church and Lutheran Church in America for the following two years. He is active in the national movement to close the U.S. Army School of the Americas (recently renamed the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation), which has been linked to human rights atrocities. In 2006, Jack brought his commitment to peacemaking into the realm of formal politics when he challenged the incumbent Martin Sabo in the 5th Congressional District. In 2008, he sought DFL endorsement for the U.S. Senate.

    At the University of St. Thomas, where he is an associate professor of justice and peace studies, he teaches courses including Active Nonviolence and Theologies of Justice and Peace.

    Sara Nelson-Pallmeyer graduated from the University of Minnesota with a major in biology. From 1984 to 1986, she and Jack served as co-directors of the Center for Global Education’s house of studies in Managua, Nicaragua. Sara went on to hold various positions, including associate director, at the Center for Global Education. She then worked as family services manager at Twin Cities Habitat for Humanity from 1996 until 2005, when she assumed her current position as director of the Center for Families. She serves on the advisory committee for the Winds of Peace Foundation and is on the board of Congregations Caring for Creation.

    The Nelson-Pallmeyers are active in the faith-based Community of St. Martin and are members of Holy Trinity Lutheran Church in Minneapolis. They have three daughters.

  • Helmut & Rotraut Diefenthal

    Born in Germany in 1924, Helmut Diefenthal, M.D., grew up in Berlin and spent two years as a medic on the Eastern front during World War II. After completing medical school and a residency in internal medicine, he and his wife, Rotraut Diefenthal, born in East Prussia, spent four years in Malaysia, doing clinic work with a special emphasis on tuberculosis and parasite infestation. They were then assigned to a remote hospital in Tanzania.

    The Diefenthals came to the U.S. in 1965, where Helmut received training for his second specialty, radiology, at the University of Minnesota. At the same time, Rotraut studied to become a radiological technologist. They returned to Tanzania in 1970 to inaugurate the department of radiology at the new Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Center (KCMC), a major teaching facility and referral center for regional and district hospitals in East Africa.

    In 1972, the Diefenthals came back to Minnesota. During the following 16 years, Helmut served as an assistant professor at the University of Minnesota and worked at the Veterans Administration Hospital in Minneapolis. In 1987, the couple established the East Africa Medical Assistance Foundation to aid the KCMC and provide medical education and training, medical equipment and medical care in Tanzania. In 1989, they retired and returned to Tanzania to continue their work as medical missionaries.

    At the KCMC, Helmut Diefenthal treats patients, trains residents at the Kilimanjaro School of Radiology, which he and Rotraut founded, and works with volunteer radiologists who help educate and prepare Tanzanian medical personnel in basic radiology. Rotraut oversees the mammography program at the KCMC and assists with ultrasound studies.

    The couple are members of Grace University Lutheran Church in Minneapolis and have four children.