Remarks at the Luncheon After the Ground-breaking Ceremonies at Abilene.

Governor Docking, Senator Darby, and distinguished members of this most distinguished audience:

I was warned by the remarks of Senator Darby that this was of course a nonpartisan meeting in every sense of the word. But I think there's nothing wrong, for me, in expressing a little bit of disappointment that Governor Docking could not have been Republican. And of course he is still a young man, and there's a chance--(laughter). Certainly I for one would be on the threshold of welcoming him into the party ranks whenever he wants to change.

This is a most extraordinary privilege for me--a group of people made up largely of close personal friends, and representing in many ways various stages and phases of my own fife. There is at least one individual here who was a member of my high school class that graduated in 1909 with me 50 years ago--when I tried to come out to the fiftieth reunion, it became impossible. There is here a classmate of mine from West Point, a man who became one of the most distinguished generals of our time; across the land there are individuals of every kind and of every class and every calling whom I have met--on the golf course, in business associations, associations with Columbia University, and in military and political life.

And we are all met in the town that has, for me, a very deep, sentimental meaning. I tried to express a little bit of this, this morning, but trying to speak into the teeth of a little wind and not knowing exactly which one of those many microphones I was supposed to be talking into, I was not very sure that I was getting over my point.

I spoke of a time 50 years ago when, we knew, our parents, my family and the people they knew lived a certain religious philosophy. I suppose that many of you believe that the name Abilene is an Indian name; it's out of the Bible. And in this simple community--that went through its heyday of, let's say, wild West hilarity, and even worse, and became a community of God-fearing, hard-working, simple people--it seems to me there's a sort of cross-section of the deep convictions that truly motivate the United States, when we stop and think what we are really trying to do.

Moneyed men are not really trying just to get more money. The professional, the teacher, the lawyer, the doctor, the man who is working with his hands to create the wealth of our country, those people are not thinking merely in material gain. There is a spiritual aspiration, spoken or unspoken, that may be articulate in their own minds, and may not be-but still, they are thinking of the future at least in these terms: my grandchildren, what am I going to leave to them? Or, if you have no grandchildren, the little tots you see around you, what is going to be the kind of world they are going to inherit, and that they are going, one day, to run?

This is the problem. This is the problem that is connected with this library. A group of people, with no selfish ends to serve at all, looking for nothing except to serve their fellow man, and not primarily just now but those people who can look and see this little segment in one particular phase of the development of the United States, from way back in 1607 in Jamestown to whatever hour that individual may be researching the records that these people have made it possible to accumulate, keep together, and make available for study.

So my pride is not because merely that I come down here amazed at what my own little town has done, because it was really the individuals of this town that had the idea about preserving the family home, and the museum. They had not then of course thought of a library, because they weren't thinking of any man being a President and accumulating the kind of papers to put in Presidential libraries. But they had the idea not merely to glorify the name of a soldier or a soldier's associates, but because even then they said, this institution is set up to promote good citizenship, and good citizenship means concern for the future.

So, as I see the physical development, the old ugly buildings that have been cleared away, the new structures and the big development that is going on around the museum and the home and the library, when I see what the town has done, it seems to me not a written record but a record in people's accomplishments, and in their faces, and in their friendships, that I sense as I come back here. These are the things that Abilene means to me.

So I thank each individual who had any part in making this library possible. And of course I am going to be long gone, one of these days. Most of us at my age have not too many years to think of the future. This means we are thinking of the future. My pride is that each one of you individuals is thinking of that future, and trying to make it a better place, a stronger America, standing always in the position of leadership to support freedom, the dignity of man, his rights, and an ordered existence in an orderly world of peace with justice.

Thank you.