The San Diego Foundation will celebrate its 25th anniversary over several months beginning with a gala commemorating the generation that helped to build San Diego into a modern city.

NBC News Anchor Tom Brokaw will be the special guest speaker at the Gala, set for Friday, June 23, 2000, at the Hilton La Jolla Torrey Pines. Brokaw's books, The Greatest Generation, and The Greatest Generation Speaks, tell the stories of Americans who grew up during the Depression and helped to win World War II on two fronts.

San Diego's largest public foundation is working in partnership with Sempra Energy on its anniversary celebration, which will last for eight months, from May through December 2000.

According to Bob Kelly, president and CEO of The San Diego Foundation, Brokaw has much to say to a San Diego audience. "In many ways, San Diego is a city built upon the WWII generation," said Kelly. "We transformed from a seaside village to a city through the course of the war, and it was that generation who moved to San Diego and went to work who established the great quality of life we enjoy today."

The San Diego Foundation's founders hail from Brokaw's "greatest generation". The Foundation was born into that great tradition of philanthropy.

Brokaw's highly acclaimed books are milestones in a distinguished journalistic career.

Beginning his career in Omaha and Atlanta before joining NBC News in 1966, Brokaw was the White House correspondent for NBC News during Watergate, and from 1976 to 1981 he anchored the Today show. He has been the sole anchor and managing editor of NBC Nightly News since 1983 and has won every major award in broadcast journalism, including two DuPonts, a Peabody Award, and several Emmys.

In 1984 Brokaw went to France to make a documentary marking the 40th anniversary of D-day.

Although he was thoroughly briefed on the historical background of the invasion, he was totally unprepared for how it would affect him emotionally. Flooded with childhood memories of WW II, Brokaw began asking veterans at the ceremony to revisit their past and talk about what happened, triggering a chain reaction of war-torn confessions.

"I think this is the greatest generation any society ever produced," Brokaw said on the Today show following his coverage of the 50th anniversary of D-day.

After almost 15 years and hundreds of letters and interviews, Brokaw wrote The Greatest Generation, a representative cross-section of the stories he came across. This collection is more than a mere chronicle of a tumultuous time, it is history made personal by a cast of everyday people transformed by extraordinary circumstances: the first woman to break the homemaker role, minorities suffering countless indignities to boldly fight for their country, infantrymen who went on to become the most distinguished leaders in the world, small-town kids who became corporate magnates. From the reminiscences of George Bush and Julia Child to the astonishing heroism and moving love stories of everyday people, The Greatest Generation salutes those whose sacrifices changed the course of American history.

What makes this the greatest generation? Not many historians argue with Brokaw's perceptions. "This generation lived through great economic deprivations," said Brokaw. "Just when they began to have some hope, they were lifted up out of their small communities or off city streets, and sent thousands of miles across the Pacific, thousands of miles across the Atlantic, to fight wars in the most primitive conditions for years at a time."

"Then they came back, rebuilt their enemies, built this country into the most powerful industrial economy in the history of civilization, stared down communism, took advantage of the GI Bill, spread out across America and built communities and families and schools, and never whined, never whimpered, and never asked for attention."

After his book was published in 1998, Brokaw began receiving what soon became thousands of letters from members of the generation he celebrates, and from their families. It was a sampling of these responses that became his second book, The Greatest Generation Speaks in 1999.

Brokaw's speech is part of a program celebrating the founding of The San Diego Foundation in 1975. During its 25th anniversary celebration, The Foundation hopes to inspire new philanthropy throughout the San Diego region. The Foundation today maintains more than $300 million in assets, and distributes more than $30 million each year for charitable purposes. The San Diego Foundation, with offices in downtown San Diego and Rancho Santa Fe, manages more than 600 private funds.