Proclamation 4839—National Defense Transportation Day and National Transportation Week, 1981

From the Boston Post Road to the Pony Express to the golden spike that joined together the transcontinental railroads ... from the flight at Kitty Hawk and the appearance of the first horseless carriage to the advent of jet travel and the development of the interstate highway system... transportation in America has played a vital and historical role in our development as a Nation.

Today, transportation is still vital to our economy, necessary to our defense, essential to our personal mobility and leisure. Transportation keeps America moving, producing, and growing.

Among the Americans who contribute to transportation are the hundreds of thousands who build machines, construct the facilities, operate and maintain the equipment, and provide the services that make our transportation systems work. Countless others labor to make transportation better and to meet the needs of our changing times.

In their honor and in recognition of the indispensable role transportation plays in our lives, we set aside one week each year as National Transportation Week.

By joint resolution, the Congress on May 16, 1957, requested the President to proclaim the third Friday in each May as National Defense Transportation Day, and by joint resolution of May 14, 1962, requested the President to designate the week in which that Friday falls as National Transportation Week.

Now, Therefore, I, Ronald Reagan, President of the United States of America, do hereby designate Friday, May 15, 1981, as National Defense Transportation Day, and the week beginning May 10, 1981, as National Transportation Week.

In Witness Whereof, I have hereunto set my hand this twenty-second day of April in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and eighty-one, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and fifth.

RONALD REAGAN