Valdas Adamkus

He married Alma Nutautaitė in 1951. After he became the President, his wife became involved in charitable activities especially Lithuanian social programs focusing on the welfare of children. In 1999 she opened a foundation, the Alma Adamkienė Charity and Support Fund.

He was born into a Roma Catholic family in Kaunas on 3 November 1926. His father was one of the first heads of the Lithuanian Air Force School in the Republic of Lithuania and his mother worked at the Ministry of Communications.

He studied at the Ausra (Dawn) Gymnasium in Kaunas.

As a young man he became involved with the resistance movement for Lithuania's independence; he published and circulated the underground newspaper ‘Jaunime, budek!’ (Youth, Be on Guard!).

He moved with his family to Germany for a short while in 1944 before returning to Lithuania where he entered Homeland Defense Team fighting against the Soviet Army. Howeve,r he along with his family was forced to flee the country during the World War II due to difficult political situation.

He studied at the University of Munich in Germany and later emigrated to the United States in 1949.

During the 1950s he served as a senior non-commissioned officer with the United States 5th Army Reserve's military intelligence unit. He also continued his education and graduated as a as a civil engineer from Illinois Institute of Technology in 1961.

In 1958, he became the Vice-Chairman of the SANTARA-SVIESA (Accord-Light) cultural-political federation, a public organization of the Lithuanian émigrés of liberal orientation, a post he held till 1965. He became the organization’s chairman in 1967.

In spite of not living in Lithuania, he was genuinely concerned about his homeland and her citizens and collaborated with fellow Lithuanian Americans to raise concerns about ongoing deportations of Lithuanians to Siberia by the Soviets and other Soviet activities in occupied Lithuania.

When the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was founded in 1970, he joined the agency in Cincinnati. Eventually he was made the regional administrator by President Ronald Reagan, and was made responsible for all air, water, hazardous waste, and other pollution control programs in Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, and Wisconsin.

He visited Lithuania in 1972, as a member of the official delegation from the United States attending an environmental conference in Moscow. It was his first visit in almost 30 years. His concern for his motherland kept gnawing at him and over the next several years he made frequent trips to Lithuania.

He was presented with the Distinguished Executive Presidential Rank Award—the highest honor that can be bestowed upon a civil servant—by U.S. President Reagan in 1985.

He received a Distinguished Career Award from EPA Administrator Carol Browner upon his retirement from the agency.

In 2005, he received the Grand Cross Special Class of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany.