Tom Brokaw is coming!

It's official: The May 2 "Know the Score LIVE!" held at the Museum will feature a special guest: the Former NBC Nightly News anchor and UI Alumni Service Award winner Tom Brokaw (right)!

The program is presented in recognition of Holocaust Remembrance Day, which is May 2. Brokaw will discuss his latest book, Boom, as well as reflect on the people he met and stories he heard when researching his bestseller, The Greatest Generation.

When Brokaw was anchor and managing editor of the NBC Nightly News from 1982 through 2004, he was one of the most widely known and respected newsmen in the United States. He traveled the world covering the major stories of the time, including the Tiananmen Square massacre in China and the fall of the Berlin Wall, which literally came down around him.

Brokaw attended the University of Iowa as an undergraduate, but completed his degree at the University of South Dakota. Nevertheless, he has shared his time, talents, and financial resources with the UI, leading to the Alumni Service Award from the UI Alumni Association.

"Know the Score," part of the monthly arts and humanities series hosted by Joan Kjaer, can be heard live on radio station KSUI, 91.7 FM (101.7 FM in Dubuque) and KHKE, 89.5 FM in Cedar Falls/Waterloo. It will be rebroadcast 10 a.m. to noon Saturday, May 3, on the Iowa Public Radio classical network, including KSUI and KHKE as well as WOI, FM 90.1 in Ames/Des Moines.

Other guests on the program will be Jason Weinberger, the director of the Waterloo-Cedar Fall Symphony, who will share his family's personal story of suffering and loss during the Holocaust; and Arthur Canter, UI professor emeritus, who will describe his experiences as a U.S. soldier entering the Mauthausen concentration camp at the end of the war.

Christopher Merrill, director of the UI International Writing Program, will read literary selections related to World War II and the Holocaust.

Weinberger and a group of principal-chair players from the Waterloo-Cedar Falls Symphony will perform selections from the "Quartet for the End of Time," written in a German prison camp during World War II by French composer Olivier Messiaen. Messiaen, a pianist, discovered among his fellow inmates a clarinetist, a violinist and a violoncellist, and wrote his mystical and haunting quartet for that unusual group of instruments.

The four performers -- Weinberger, clarinet; Sean Botkin, piano; Anita Tucker, violin; and Jonathan Chenoweth, cello -- will perform and discuss several of the eight movements of the quartet.

According to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Holocaust Remembrance Day is a day that has been set aside for remembering the victims of the Holocaust and for reminding Americans of what can happen to civilized people when bigotry, hatred and indifference reign.

"The Holocaust is not merely a story of destruction and loss; it is . . . a remarkable story of the human spirit and the life that flourished before the Holocaust, struggled during its darkest hours, and ultimately prevailed as survivors rebuilt their lives."

The University of Iowa Alumni Association is the corporate sponsor of "Know the Score LIVE!" broadcasts.