Talent selected for Zelda Martin Cozean Lecture series

PARK HILLS – U.S. Sen. Jim Talent, R-Mo., will speak at the Farmington Centene Center at 7 p.m., Nov. 11, as guest lecturer for the Zelda Martin Cozean Lecture Series.

The lecture series is open to the public and is coordinated, in part, by the Cozean family and Mineral Area College Foundation Inc.

Talent was elected to serve Missouri in the U.S. Senate in November 2002. Previously, Talent served eight years in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1993 to 2001 and eight years in the Missouri House from 1985 to 1992.

Talent is a member of four senate committees: the Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee; the Armed Services Committee; the Energy and Natural Resources Committee; and the Aging Committee.

Talent is the chairman of the Armed Services Seapower Subcommittee and the chairman of the Agriculture Committee’s Subcommittee on Marketing, Inspection, and Product Promotion. In addition, he is a member of President Bush’s Export Council and was selected to serve as a Deputy Whip.

He has received numerous awards and honors.

Talent is the first male recipient of the National Association of Women Business Owners’ “National Public Policy” award. In addition, Talent was named “Legislator of the Year” by the Department of Missouri Veterans of Foreign Wars, the International Franchise Association and the Independent Electrical Contractors and he’s been honored by the Seniors Coalition, the United Seniors Association and the Coalition to Save Medicare.

In 2000, Talent received the Vietnam Veterans of America’s Lifetime Achievement Award,” and he has been named a “Taxpayer Hero” by the Americans for Tax Reform, “Guardian of Senior’s Rights” by the 60 Plus Association and the “Friend of the Farmer” by the Missouri Farm Bureau.

He was born in 1956 and raised in Des Peres. He graduated from Kirkwood High School in 1973 and attended Washington University in St. Louis, where he received the Arnold J. Lien Prize as the most outstanding undergraduate in political science.

He graduated with honors from the University of Chicago Law School in 1981 and clerked for Judge Richard Posner of the United States Court of Appeals from 1982 through 1983.

He and his wife, Brenda, were married in 1984. They have three children. The family lives in Chesterfield.

The Zelda Martin Cozean Lecture Series is a memorial tribute to Zelda Martin Cozean, a longtime resident of the Mineral Area. Cozean strongly advocated the need for education and community service.

The series is designed to bring prominent lecturers to the Mineral Area College campus and to provide a platform for social, political and economic debate. Past speakers have included then-U.S. Senator John Ashcroft, Missouri Supreme Court Chief Justice Duane Benton and Holocaust survivor Heddy Epstein.