Today, Wriston still lives and works in New York City. He is a director of ICOS Corp., Cygnus Inc. and Vion Pharmaceuticals.

"I'm working on mostly biotech things," he said. "I write two or three (opinion) pieces a year for the . The last one was on insourcing."

In May, Wriston and Keller, along with author Edna Ferber and Appleton teacher-professor Ken Sager, were inducted into the Appleton West High School Hall of Fame.

His lucid 1992 analysis of the geopolitical implications of the information revolution, "The Twilight of Sovereignty," penned before the advent of the World Wide Web, still draws attention.

"It was received pretty well by people with interest in the subject," he said. "Ten years later, it turns out I was basically correct. It was probably five years ahead of its time, before people talked about the Internet and the information revolution."

His collection of essays, "Risk and Other Four Letter Words," demonstrate a talent for the written work he shared with his later father, who died in 1978. Copies of the senior Wriston's work, "The Nature of a Liberal College," are handed out to each graduate during annual commencement exercises, said Rick Peterson, LU spokesman.

Wriston is among elite company for this round of Freedom medals. Others receiving them in June were politician Edward Brooke; cosmetics mogul Estee Lauder; actresses Doris Day and Rita Moreno; golfer Arnold Palmer; National Geographic Society Chairman Gilbert Grosvenor; historian Vartan Gregorian; ophthalmology researcher Arnall Patz; journalists Norman Podhoretz and Robert Bartley; Mormon Church president Gordon B. Hinckley; and Pope John Paul II.