Part of the fun of presenting the Independent’s Lifetime Achievement Award — bestowed annually during our Washington Writers Conference** — is finding a corresponding gift that’s uniquely meaningful to the recipient. Once the board selects that recipient, we discuss potential items with the presenter (who typically knows the honoree well) to find out what they might genuinely like.

This year, to ensure that awardee Richard Peabody received something as truly special as he is, we chatted with presenter Rose Solari, who mentioned Rick has been a huge fan of Washington’s football team since back in the day, “and he especially loved [quarterback] Sonny Jurgensen.”

Sports-related awards are a trending theme for us. After Tiffany stopped offering the engraved crystal bowl we previously presented (and about which someone asked, “Why a bowl?”), we gave last year’s honoree, famed DC poet and baseball enthusiast E. Ethelbert Miller, a personalized Louisville Slugger bat. With the knowledge that Jurgensen is Rick’s special sauce, our further descent into the overheated, sometimes sketchy world of sports memorabilia was unavoidable.

What we quickly learned: After Sonny was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1983, he signed innumerable, mass-produced items meant for wide distribution at events around the country. But we wanted something one-of-a-kind from earlier in his career — something from his heyday, when Rick himself was just embarking on his own journey in the literary world — and found an autographed ball from the 1971 season, the first of many years Washington made it to the playoffs.

(The scramble to then procure a custom-made, suitably inscribed stand — which of course didn’t arrive in time — is a story for another day.)

I was sitting with Rick during the presentation as Rose described his extensive contributions to DC’s literary community and then mentioned the signed football. His mouth dropped open as he gesticulated to the paper containing his acceptance speech.

All I could think was, “Oh, no — what’s wrong?”

That’s when things came full circle: Rick was already planning to quote Sonny in his remarks:

“An interviewer once asked Washington Redskins great, quarterback Sonny Jurgensen, why he held so many records in the NFL statistics book. And Sonny said, well, he’d played 17 years in the pros, from 1957-1974. If you do something long enough, you do attract attention. I think that’s a big part of any career.”

When you do something long enough and well enough — like publishing a beloved literary magazine (Gargoyle) for decades; championing generations of local authors, especially women writers starting back in the 1970s and 80s, when such support was scarce; founding an independent press (Paycock); and subsequently amassing legions of fans like Solari (whose Alan Squire Publishing produced the authoritative Richard Peabody Reader) — you do attract attention, and it’s deserved.

Stay tuned for news about next year’s Lifetime Achievement Award, which will be presented at the Washington Writers Conference on Saturday, May 1, 2027. We’re already looking forward to the selection journey.

(**Speaking of the conference, congratulations to James Fraze, winner of our drawing for a $50 Wonderland Books gift certificate just for returning his attendee survey. Thanks to everyone who returned a survey, which helps us to keep making each year’s Washington Writers Conference the best one ever.)

[Richard Peabody photo by Bruce Guthrie.]

Jennifer Bort Yacovissi’s novel, Up the Hill to Home, tells the story of four generations of a family in Washington, DC, from the Civil War to the Great Depression. She reviews regularly for the Independent and serves on its board of directors as president. Follow Jenny on Bluesky at @jbywrites.bsky.social.