An open house and commemorative exhibit will celebrate the 113th birthday of Dean Rusk, namesake of our Dean Rusk International Law Center here at the University of Georgia School of Law.

Rusk was born February 9, 1909, in Cherokee, a Georgia county about 40 miles north of Atlanta, to parents who were schoolteachers. He would go on to be the second-longest-serving U.S. Secretary of State, in the administrations of Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. He then would return to Georgia to take up a position as our law school’s Samuel A. Sibley Professor of International Law. Following his death in 1994 at age 85, Rusk was buried in Oconee Hill Cemetery in Athens – 100 miles from his birthplace and just steps away from Sanford Stadium, where he spent many a Saturday afternoon watching his beloved Bulldogs play football.

Tomorrow’s 10 a.m.-4 p.m. open house at the Dean Rusk International Law Center will feature a collection of archival items about Rusk’s life and work. Portions of the display and of the accompanying Dean Rusk Digital Exhibit were made possible through a recent grant from the Digital Library of Georgia awarded to the Alexander Campbell King Law Library, in collaboration with the Georgia Law’s Office of Public Relations and Communications.