[NEWS] Bon Jovi to receive humanitarian award

Jon Bon Jovi wrote "Runaway," the song that launched his rock-star career, in 1980 as he rode a bus in Manhattan past homeless young runaways near Covenant House, the national organization that aids unmoored youth.

"It could have been me," Bon Jovi told an audience at a fund-raiser for Covenant House Pennsylvania more than 30 years later. "But something else saved me. It was that song."

A staple of radio and the concert stage for decades, Bon Jovi, 52, is also a philanthropist who will be the 2014 recipient of Philadelphia's Marian Anderson Award at the Kimmel Center on Tuesday.

The award, whose past recipients include Maya Angelou, Oprah Winfrey, and Sidney Poitier, honors artists who are also humanitarians. It is named after Anderson, an African American native of Philadelphia born in 1897 who was renowned for her singing voice as well as her advocacy for civil and human rights.