as his greatest contribution to the struggle against racialism and racial arrogance. President Kennedy was a remarkable man and a man of his century. Born to wealth, he was yet deeply sensitive to the problems and hopes of the common man and of the underprivileged. This aspect of his character was reflected both in his domestic and international policies. His ideas on economic aid, social welfare, and world peace were far in advance of large sections of influential opinion in his own country. As the youngest President ever of the United States, he was truly a representative of our century—a century of expanding opportunities for all the elimination of poverty, ignorance, and disease, and the establishment of a new order of truth, equality, and social justice. With a true sense of history John Kennedy carried on in a most dramatic manner what Abraham Lincoln began 100 years ago; like Lincoln he was prevented from carrying his endeavors to the great heights he had set for himself by an assassin's bullet. As a man endowed with great human warmth, his relationship with people was always friendly and sincere. I was privileged to meet President Kennedy and his wife in Washington in 1961 not long after he became President of the United States. In fact, I think I am right in saying that I was the first head of state to whom he granted audience immediately after he had been sworn in as the President of the United States. I was deeply impressed by his wisdom and sincerity. His presence, his sense of understanding and appreciation of the grave issues confronting our world, and his genuine interest in the solution of the problems confronting developing countries made me regard him even then as a man from whom the world could expect great things, as a man who could become one of the most important leaders of our time. It really takes a man like John Kennedy to say, and I quote from his writings: "A man does what he must in spite of personal consequences, in spite of obstacles and dangers and pressures and that is the basis of all human morality." We in Africa can have no more appropriate epitaph to John Kennedy's memory than his own words spoken in his inaugural address: "Whether you are citizens of America or of the world, ask of us the same high standards of strength and sacrifice that we shall ask of you. With a good conscience our only sure reward with history, the final judge of our deeds, let us go forth to lead the land we love, asking His blessing and His help but knowing that here on earth God's work must truly be our own." To his dear wife and children, I send deepest condolence on my own behalf and on behalf of the people of Ghana. Mr. Speaker, by unanimous consent I am extending my remarks to include the sermon of Rabbi Jacob J. Weinstein at K.A.M. Temple in Chicago on November 25, 1963. It is worthy of a permanent place in the literature of this tragic period when in the presence of a shock and a grief that reached into all nations the whole world seemed on the eve of recapturing its soul. Rabbi Weinstein's eulogy follows: It is with a heavy heart I speak to you today. Our President has been taken from us-not by the gentle angel who comes to give us peace after the storms and strifes of life's weary years, not by the one who spares us the decay of age and the bemeaning of time-but by the violent one, the mad, distemperate one, the ignorant one of aggressive brawn and little brain-the satanic deputy of all that is raw and primitive in this land of ours-ignorant, violent and primitive, yet armed with telescopic sight, and able to kill from afar, send the arrow by night and speed the pestilence by day. Unhappy land, unhappy time-that preserves the jungle heart and the troglodytic mind and arms them with the shining armor and the long thrust of science. John Fitzgerald Kennedy is cut down in the midst of life. Where was the like of him—Adonis with the mind of Nestor? A golden-haired youth who could have dallied in all the opulent pastures of great wealth and lived as riotously and elegantly as the Medicis-he gave himself rather to the service of our Republic. As a soldier, as Congressman, Senator, President, he revealed a remarkable insight into the political and economic order of our society. He knew the structure of power. He knew intimately the ways in which men are guided and goaded to action. He knew the play and counterplay of forces and the mysterious wheels within wheels which make up the chain of effective command. He was a political marvel who could learn and retain an infinite number of facts about an incredible number of subjects and could sift them and concentrate them upon the problems at hand. One day when the President's Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity was meeting at the White House, I was privileged to watch him as he walked from one meeting to another—some six in all the Business Ethics Advisory Committee, the Labor and Management Conference, a joint committee on the new trade bill, a Committee on the Alliance for Progress, the White House Conference on the Aged-and relate himself to the complicated agenda of each group, make excellent suggestions on the work reported and present sound advice on the next steps for each committee. I was given to understand that this 3-hour stint was only a fraction of his working day and that before he would get to bed that night, there were several functions of state, several meetings with congressional leaders on thorny matters and a vast heap of legislative and State Department memos to read, amend and sign. HIS HEART WAS NEVER ABSENT But while his mind worked with incredible logic and remarkable speed, and his body sustained an energy expenditure that would have honored a platoon, his heart was never absent. He was one of the most contained men emotionally I have ever known. This was not because there was any lack of feeling. It was because he had suffused his heart into his mind. He could afford no wasteful drain of sentiment. He was completely bent on finding the necessary means to implement his vision of the good society. He would be the first to admit that he was no self-abnegating saint-that he relished ego satisfaction with the best of us; but he would likewise maintain, and rightly, that he had over the long and disciplined years sublimated that ego into community and that what remained of self-interest was enlightened and socialized. He had style. There was grace in him and an instinct for the right measure for every purpose. His wit was dry, perceptive, often sharp but seldom cutting. He played politics as the young David played his harp-with artistry so that the wiliest of old wolves and foxes of the Senate knew that his charm was never a substitute for strength, but merely the sense of ease with which he used his power. Together with Mrs. Kennedy he had made the White House a palace of grace and beauty. He removed the last remnants of the coonskin, the spittoon and the antimacassar and made it reflect, as it should, the ripe artistic heritage of our Nation. I will never forget the visit Mrs. Weinstein and I made on the occasion of the centenary of the proclamation which ended slavery and saw these two beautiful people gracefully representing the youth, the vitality and the power of this Nation in this home which they had made beautiful and intimate without making it parochial. BRIGHT BROTHER-FATHER TO OUR YOUTH It is not an accident that so many young people have come to the synagogue to mourn our President. He was their assurance that youth was not allergic to maturity, that one did not have to spend all one's youth in apprenticeship, that one did not have to be dour and solemn to be profound. He was the great arbiter between the generations. He was David hitting bull's-eye the Philistine Goliaths of our time with the smooth round pebbles of his incisive logic. He made political battle as exciting as a gridiron contest, and the war for social security as dramatic as Gettysburg. Through the Peace Corps he developed a most effective moral equivalent for war. The youth of the Nation have lost a father who was also a brother. It is still not possible to accept the fact that this handsome puissant statesman in whom the forces of nature had opulently conspired to channel incredible riches of strength and wisdom is no more, that the striking profile of courage which lifted our hearts on that bitter January day in 1961 and, bare-headed, cast its golden light was the target for an assassin's bullet. It seemed as he responded to the high challenge of the hour in his crisp New England speech, that he was aligned with the enduring forces of earth and that the bright armor of his genius would turn any adversary's noisome threat. STAIN OF VIOLENCE IN OUR NATIONAL LIFE This is not the time to consider the wild barbaric forces still loose in our land, the immaturity of the mass mind and the malevolent forces that play upon it—but we shall have to soon-or the gangsters, the atavistic radicals of right and left, the childish irritation with the inevitable disciplines of a highly interlaced social fabric such as ours will destroy us. There are altogether too many respectable people whose sins of omission and commission help to trigger the gunman's hand and supply the heady stimulation for the dynamiter's throw. We stand idly by the blood of our brother-not only when he is slain but when we encourage under specious slogans the lawless and anarchic and callous forces in our society. You have seen the cartoon by Bill Mauldin-Abe Lincoln clutching his head in woebegone despair, as he contemplates this new martyrdom. What an ominous red thread of violence connects these century-separated assassinations! The lynch rope, the auto-da-fé faggots, the sniper's bullet-these are the blots on the bright face of the American dream. They are the present-day survivals of our jungle frontier in our land and in our hearts. Happily we can point to the remarkable discipline of the Negro in the mass demonstrations of the past several years as evidence that even the most wronged and deprived people need not meet violence with violence, that there are great reservoirs of common decency and of Judeo-Christian reverence for life in the hearts of our people. Strange is it not that the most deprived and despoiled of our land can respond with non-violent dignity while those who are asked to share only a little of their wealth and power maul our dignitaries and cry for Judge Lynch? We must mobilize that decency to shrink the area in which the primitives can operate. Let the blood of two Emancipation Presidents be the seed of a new Nation dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal and are entitled to their full heritage under God. Someone has said that men are things that think a little but chiefly forget. One hundred years ago the rabbi of this congregation, the beloved Liebman Adler, the father of the more famous Dankmar Adler of the Adler-Sullivan team, said in his eulogy of Lincoln: "The more and more thoroughly we reminisce about Lincoln, the more do we love him and the more do we find his murder aimless and the greater do we see the loss to his own family and the Nation." What might this dark brooding man with the infinite weariness of the burden of man's inhumanity to man say to this golden-headed colleague who now belongs with him to the ages? But this is the hour for mourning and for prayer in our heart that God will grant comfort to the sorrowing family to the wife, to the children, to the parents—too intimate already with grief and to the brothers and sisters who constitute a Maccabean tribe and who in their various ways provided brilliant models of social consciousness and social service at their best. We must take courage too, for ours is a nation too strong and resilient to be weakened by the loss of even its finest leader. It is the saving grace of a democratic check and balance system such as ours that a temporary blow to one of its powers only shifts the burden to the others until equilibrium is restored. And we have in our new President a man of great sagacity, one knowledgeable in all the varied manners and mysteries of politics and administration and one who faithfully subscribes to the national goals of our late President. It remains only for us to do the unfinished work-to bind and heal the wounds of our Nation, to bring the Negro and all minorities into the family estate as full brothers in fact, to make the machine in its automated dimensions our servant and not our master, to give effective education and training to all our young and, finally, to keep open the channels of communication that we might achieve a just peace in the framework of a world government of the United Nations. If we would transmute the pain of this hour into the substance of good, then must we here highly resolve that we shall achieve in our land an equality of opportunity and a general security without impounding the liberties of the people, without penalizing differences with death, without reducing the infinite variety of the human condition to the manageable categories of totalitarian necessity. This was the overreaching goal of John Kennedy's massive and brilliant thrust. Our achievement of that goal will be his most adequate and fitting memorial. I hear an ancient voice speaking from the Book of Books-it comes from one intimate with grief and acquainted with sorrow. He spoke to a nation whose cup of woe had filled to overflowing. Comfort ye, comfort ye my people-For ye have paid double for all your sins Bring now good tidings to the humble And bind up the broken hearted And the opening of the eyes to them that are bound. Comfort all that mourn All that mourn in Zion Give them a garland for ashes The oil of joy for mourning The mantle of praise for the spirit of heaviness. Mr. Speaker, Patrick Joyce is a top newsman whom I have known for 17 years, our friendship dating back to 1946 when he was working on an article for the International News Service on the freight subway system in Chicago's Loop. Mr. Joyce is a resident of the seventh ward which has been my home for more than half a century. Prior to coming to Chicago he lived in Massachusetts and as an active newsman several times interviewed President Kennedy's grandfather, "Honey" Fitzgerald, whom he described in a letter just received by me as "a grand man in every way." With this preface, Mr. Speaker, I am extending my remarks to include a poem by Patrick Joyce that eloquently speaks a sentiment felt by all Americans: IN MEMORIAM: JOHN F. KENNEDY (By Patrick Joyce) No man can know the measure of Are all the yearnings of his years One nation bound in brotherhood: A world of good, where men could find TRIBUTE BY Hon. James G. O'Hara OF MICHIGAN Mr. Speaker, the Imlay City Times, in its December 13, 1963, issue, printed part of a letter written by Jens Brueckner describing his reaction and that of others in Germany to the tragic death of our late President Kennedy. Mr. Speaker, I believe some of my colleagues may find Jens Brueckner's letter interesting and under unanimous consent I wish to offer an excerpt from the letter, as it appeared in the Imlay City Times. GERMANY'S REACTION TO KENNEDY DEATH Jens Brueckner, German exchange student who spent last year in the Herman Haedicke home, and attended Imlay City Community High School, recently wrote to the Haedicke family, following the assassination of President Kennedy. Jen's letter follows, in part, telling of his reaction, and that of the German people, to the assassination of the President. OLDENBURG, November 30, 1963. It was a deep shock last Friday when I heard about the assassination of the President. At first I just could not believe it, and when I heard that he was wounded, I surely thought that these wounds would not be mortal. The more I was shocked when the speaker announced after a period of silence, "Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, is dead." When I heard about the happenings in Dallas, I immediately switched to the AFN, an American station in Germany. They broadcasted all incoming news from Texas, described every detail, and so I got a very clear and accurate picture. All German radio programs were interrupted to present all news about the President. It was a shock for the entire German people when they heard about the death of the President. You can say that no President was as popular as Kennedy here in Germany. Through his visit to Germany in June he won so many friends, and so many people felt as if a member of their family had died. Stations did not present anything else but serious and solemn music and news from America. The regular program was interrupted until 1 day after the funeral. The funeral itself was broadcast too, and you could even see it on television through Telstar. The days from Friday to Monday were days of national mourning There was no sport, no movies, no dances, etc. You really can say that it was a shock for the entire nation, and that the people are really worried what the future will bring. TRIBUTE BY -Jens Brueckner. Hon. Wright Patman OF TEXAS Mr. Speaker, religious tolerance is a cornerstone of the American public. John F. Kennedy was our first Roman Catholic President. It is most fitting that the editorial in the November 29, 1963, issue of the Baptist Standard be given the widest possible publication. The words of Editor E. S. James are as follows: THE PRESIDENT'S UNTIMELY Death It is now 3 p.m., Friday, November 22. Two hours ago the President of the United States was assassinated on the streets of Dallas, and at this hour Gov. John Connally lies seriously wounded from the same brutal attack. The Baptist Standard joins multiplied millions over the whole earth in grief over the President's untimely death and the terrible manner by which it was effected. Texas citizens can never forget the shame that has been brought to this State and to the city of Dallas by the cowardly assault. It is not yet known who committed the crime, but whoever it was did not represent the level-headed and patriotic citizenship of this State and city. President Kennedy was not a Baptist, but it is safe to say that southern Baptists have had no better friend in the White House. He defended the principle of religious liberty for which many Baptist forefathers gave their lives. The editor of this magazine probably knew him about as well as any gospel minister in America knew him. We gave it as our opinion last February that he was a man of courage, integrity, and faith in God; and we shall ever remember him as such. We did not help elect him, and he knew it; but regardless of political differences we came to admire and respect him for standing by his convictions and doing it in the face of the strongest opposition. America has lost a leader whom it will not forget, and the Nation has now reaped the bitter harvest of unbridled political hatred. The deceased President's faith in God is probably best expressed in a Thanksgiving Day proclamation issued by him November 7. -E. S. JAMES. TRIBUTE BY Hon. Claude Pepper OF FLORIDA Mr. Speaker, Joseph B. Gregg, a teacher in Sunrise Junior High School, Fort Lauderdale, Fla., has composed and sent me a most venerable letter on the tragic circumstances of November 22, 1963. Under unanimous consent I offer the tribute written by Mr. Gregg. AN OPEN LETTER TO ANYBODY WHO CARED Every man, at some point in his life, acquires a herono, even more than that-an idol. And that, in the finest sense of the word. Mine no longer walks this earth. And in heretofore undiscovered reaches of my heart I have wept and have suffered through the creation of a chasm of sorrow I did not know was capable of man. I have sat in my Florida room with my wife, and watched and listened to the horror of it all unfold on TV, and I turned to hide the welling, glistening tears— because it is unmanly to cry. But through these hours I became a little lost boy at heart, and aren't little boys, at times like these, allowed to cry? Why then did I run, ashamedly, to the solitude of a room upstairs, to give lonely release to my heart? These 2 days of timelessness I have gone to work and sat and stood and walked around wide eyed as a narcotic, yet as unseeing; concentrating on the "why," yet unthinking; stunned beyond the ability to believe, yet believing every one of the millions of words I have absorbed by now. My idol has been toppled. But deeper still in the recesses of my heart, where must dwell knowledge beyond attainment of a simple human brain, I know, as surely as I know his body is dead, he is not dead. For as long as one man suffers from the cruelty of inequality; as long as one deranged mind calls for peace through war; for so long as one challenge to the salvation of mankind remains unbattled, the immortal soul and the unconquerable intellect of John Kennedy shall walk this earth-though he be embodied in us, the least of all his fellow men. I pledge myself to carry on, in my fumbling way, and however I can, his noble, dedicated and sacred work. My idol is not dead. JOSEPH B. GREGG, Sunrise Junior High School, Fort Lauderdale, Fla. TRIBUTE BY Hon. Carl D. Perkins OF KENTUCKY Mr. Speaker, under leave to extend my remarks I include the following editorial from the Hazard Herald, Hazard, Ky., of Thursday, December 12, 1963: WE'VE LOST A FRIEND (By Larry Caudill) Whenever the scroll of human history is unrolled, it will reveal John Fitzgerald Kennedy in the forerank of history's greatest men. This was evidenced only in small measure in the tribute paid the assassinated President by his people and the world. The world mourned, but it scarcely knew the full stature of Kennedy. The breadth of John Kennedy's knowledge and intelligence was amazing. He could speak with knowledgeable authority on almost any subject a common, average man could name. He was such a gracious, tolerant, common man at first acquaintance that the average man's reaction might be "he's just another ordinary fellow." But within minutes the range of John Kennedy's intelligence and reactions would inspire amazed admiration. In the winter of 1958-59 the "patriotarch," Joseph P. Kennedy, was in residence at his mansion at Palm Beach, Fla. Most of the time one or more of the Kennedy children was visiting the elder Kennedys. Jack Kennedy was a Senator and came to Palm Beach during the Christmas holiday recess of Congress. The civic and social organizations eagerly sought the younger Kennedys at their regular meetings. On this visit Senator Jack Kennedy was invited to the Everglades Club, a select social and civic group which numbers among its members not only plain millionaires but the supermillionaires like Joe Kennedy, whose financial valuation was something like $300 million. Joe prevailed upon son Jack to speak to the Everglades Club. His speech in general was a report on the work of Congress. The Palm Beach Post-Times city editor wanted a general interview with Senator Kennedy. The reporter found him relaxed on the lawn of the walled estate on Ocean Boulevard, near a small swimming pool. He had spent the morning on a cabin cruiser trolling for sailfish which were running along the Atlantic Ocean south toward Fort Lauderdale. Fishing was quite a lengthy topic of conversation beIcause we both were devoted fishermen. He noted that the current run on sails was on the small side, 3 or 4 feet long, whereas the more desirable 6- and 7-footers were scarce. His boat had caught and released unharmed about seven sailfish. It was apparent that Jack Kennedy was an expert fisherman, with a light trout rod in the mountain stream or a long outrigger trolling pole. Now, a reporter with a willing and intelligent interviewee can ask a million questions with as many topics. Jack Kennedy fielded them all with quick, accurate information. He was informed on space exploration: He expected that it would be feasible to send a man to the moon within 5 to 10 years. Now we are on the verge of it. At the Everglades Club the night before, automation in American industry and its effect on employment of the individual worker. Since he knew the reporter was from eastern Kentucky, Kennedy cited the automation in the coal industry. He said it was more advanced than the country realized. In the Everglades Club audience, he recalled, mere tycoons of the coal industry where they had been employing 10 men, within 5 to 10 years they would be employing 2 men. The other eight men, replaced by machines, would be jobless. He sought to impress upon the industrialists that it would be primarily their responsibility to look ahead to that situation and make provision for the 8 out of 10 "automated men." So it has worked out, not only in the coal industry. Lack of job opportunity is a national problem in all American industry. Senator Kennedy knew then the peculiar problems of eastern Kentucky and elsewhere in Appalachia from automation and undereducation to overpopulation and economic stagnation. Eastern Kentucky's people lost a great good friend when President Kennedy died in Dallas. Recently the Franklin D. Roosevelt, Jr., task force presented to President Kennedy its preliminary report of the first survey of the Appalachian Regional Commission. The very next day Kennedy called in appropriate officials from every department of Government concerned. He instructed them to put in motion immediately a program for the help of eastern Kentucky, and at the same time to speed up the long-range program for all of Appalachia. That's how great and how good and how humble was President John F. Kennedy. What destiny would have dealt him in the future if he had lived can be only speculation. But it could not have been but grand. His physical presence was long enough to leave his massive imprint on the Nation and the world. TRIBUTES BY Hon. John R. Pillion OF NEW YORK Mr. Speaker, the tragic death of President John F. Kennedy has engendered a sense of loss among the citizens of this Nation. To most of us, his death was a shocking and personal tragedy. |