Lyndon B. Johnson photo

Remarks in New York City at the Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr., foundation Awards Dinner

February 05, 1964

Mr..Chairman, Mr. Prime Minister, Your Eminence, Mrs. Kennedy, members of the Kennedy family, award winners, distinguished guests and friends:

Earlier generations of Americans were fortunate to have known the Adamses, the Lees, the Randolphs, the Lafollettes, and the Roosevelts.

Our generation is proud and blessed to have known the Kennedys. They are an extraordinary family. fierce competitors in life, they are a closely knit team, for they are all genuine friends as well as relatives-united in prayer, devoted to their parents, and maintaining a community of purpose and practice which makes them the world's second most powerful Common Market.

Unlike many who have their opportunities, they prefer labor to leisure. They place the public good ahead of private gain. They both preach excellence and pursue it. They have been granted more than their share of greatness, but they have also been dealt more than their share of grief. The senseless, mindless murder of their martyred brother and son brought endless, timeless grief to every American home.

John Kennedy was to have been here tonight. No cause was closer to his heart. Millions of people, at home and around the world, will reap the harvest of his pioneering work in this field--a field which has been so greatly misunderstood and so greatly neglected so many years.

Humbly, I shall carry on for him here, as I intend to carry on the great efforts that he started for lasting peace. With his memory and his spirit to inspire us, and his words and his works to guide us, we shall live up to that trust. We shall finish his fight; and we shall conquer mental retardation and mental illness and poverty and every other foe of the land that he loved, and every other foe of the people he served.

Now it is my high honor and my great pleasure to present to the Honorable John E. Fogarty, of the State of Rhode Island, the International Award of the Kennedy foundation; to the Honorable Lister Hill, of the State of Alabama; to the Honorable Bert T. Combs, former Governor of the State of Kentucky; to Dr. Grover Francis Powers, Professor Emeritus of Pediatrics at Yale University; to Dr. Robert P. Lafon of the University of Montpelier; and to Dr. Lionel S. Penrose, of the University of London.

Now it is my proud privilege to present to you the great Executive Director of the Kennedy foundation, Mr. Sargent Shriver.

Thank you.

Note: The President spoke at 9:33 p.m. at the Americana Hotel in New York City. His opening words referred to Senator Edward M. Kennedy, presiding chairman of the dinner, and his wife, Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson of Canada, and His Eminence Francis Cardinal Spellman, Archbishop of New York. Other members of the Kennedy family attending the dinner were: Mrs. Rose Kennedy, Attorney General and Mrs. Robert f. Kennedy, Mrs. Jean Smith, and Mr. and Mrs. Sargent Shriver.

Lyndon B. Johnson, Remarks in New York City at the Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr., foundation Awards Dinner Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/239953

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