An All-Star Evening - The Robert D. and Billie Ray Center

Congratulations to:

Steve Hartman, 2026 Robert D. and Billie Ray Pillar of Character Award recipient

Neil Lahammer, 2026 Kindness 101 National Teacher of the Year

About Steve Hartman

Steve Hartman has been a CBS News correspondent since 1996. Hartman shares moving stories about the extraordinary people he meets in his weekly feature segment “On the Road” — which airs Fridays on the CBS Evening News and repeats on CBS Sunday Morning. “On the Road” is modeled after the long-running series of the same name originally reported by America’s greatest TV storyteller, the late Charles Kuralt.

Hartman’s stories are also used in tens of thousands of classrooms to teach kindness and character as part of his “Kindness 101” initiative, in partnership with The Ray Center and CHARACTER COUNTS!

In 2020, Hartman co-founded “Taps Across America” – which has become a Memorial Day tradition. Every year thousands of buglers and trumpet players stand on their porches and patios to play taps in commemoration of the holiday.

Hartman is also known for his series, “Everybody Has a Story.” He proved the adage by tossing a dart at a map of America and then randomly picking an interview subject from the local phone book. Debuting in 1998 and continuing for the next seven years, Hartman produced more than 120 profiles of everyday Americans.

Hartman has won dozens of prestigious broadcast journalism awards. Most notably, he has received an Alfred I. DuPont-Columbia University Award, five national Emmy awards and 15 national Edward R. Murrow awards, including a record 12 citations for best writing.

Previously Hartman was a columnist for 60 Minutes Wednesday and correspondent for two primetime CBS News magazines, Public Eye with Bryant Gumbel (1997-98) and Coast to Coast (1996-97). Before that he was a feature reporter at KCBS-TV, the CBS owned station in Los Angeles (1994-98), WABC-TV in New York (1991-94) and KSTP-TV in Minneapolis (1987-91). He began his career in broadcast journalism at WTOL-TV in Toledo, Ohio as a news intern and general assignment reporter (1984-87).

Hartman graduated from Bowling Green State University in 1985 with a degree in broadcast journalism. He is married with three children and lives in Catskill, New York.

About Neil Lahammer

Neil Lahammer is a third-grade teacher at Burnside Elementary School in Red Wing, MN, who integrates character development and kindness into his classroom using Kindness 101 resources. These tools help create a positive, student-centered learning environment. He has seen firsthand the positive impact that Kindness 101 has had on his students, school, and district.

Inspired by “On the Road with Steve Hartman” and the Kindness 101 movement, Neil began incorporating these videos into his classroom and later collaborated with The Ray Center and CHARACTER COUNTS! to help develop Kindness 101 curricular resources used by educators nationwide. He also co-founded a Kindness Club at his school, where students meet weekly to put kindness traits into action through service projects.

Neil holds a bachelor’s degree in Elementary Education from Winona State University and a master’s degree in Leadership from the University of Wisconsin–River Falls. Neil and his wife, Meg, have two daughters.