Proclamation 3552—National School Lunch Week, 1963

Whereas the national school lunch program helps make it possible for our young people to enjoy a lunch rich in the essential elements of a good diet, and helps them to learn the benefits to be derived from good nutrition; and

Whereas the serving of a nutritious lunch to 16 million children daily, in 68,000 schools, entails the consumption of foods from the entire range and variety of items that are so abundantly and efficiently produced by our farmers, and the employment of the unexcelled skills and techniques of our highly developed food-marketing system; and

Whereas the national school lunch program represents one of the Nation's best examples of a cooperative local-State-Federal partnership for the benefit of a most important segment of our population; and

Whereas, in order to gain recognition from citizens and civic groups for the work of the national school lunch program, the Congress, by a joint resolution approved October 9, 1962 (76 Stat. 779), has designated the seven-day period beginning on the second Sunday of October in each year as National School Lunch Week, and has requested the President to issue annually a proclamation calling for the observance of that week:

Now, Therefore, I, John F. Kennedy, President of the United States of America, call upon the people of the United States to observe the week beginning October 13, 1963, as National School Lunch Week, with ceremonies and activities designed to increase public understanding and awareness of the significance of the school lunch program to the child, to the home, to the farm, to industry, and to the Nation.

In Witness Whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the Seal of the United States of America to be affixed.

DONE at the City of Washington this 27th day of August in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and sixty-three, and of the Independence of the United States of America the one hundred and eighty-eighth.

JOHN F. KENNEDY

By the President:

DEAN RUSK,

Secretary of State