Remarks at a Columbus Day Celebration in Newark, New Jersey

Governor Hughes, Senator Case, Senator Williams, Congressman Gallagher, ladies and gentlemen:

I want to express my great appreciation to all of you for your generous invitation to come here today. My grandfather, John F. Fitzgerald, who used to be the mayor of Boston, and was a Congressman, always used to claim that the Fitzgeralds were actually Italian, were descended from the Geraldinis, who came from Venice. I have never had the courage to make that claim, but I'll make it on Columbus Day here in this State of New Jersey today.

I'm glad to be here also, to be introduced by an old colleague of mine, Pete Rodino. He and your distinguished mayor came to the Congress in 1948, and we served together for a number of years. They spoke for their cities and they spoke for New Jersey, but most of all they spoke for the United States.

And I'm very proud that the people of his own city have selected Hugh Addonizio to be the mayor, and continue to send to the Congress of the United States our valued friend, Pete Rodino.

We celebrate today Columbus Day. Of all the extraordinary feats, I think the first voyage of Columbus must go down as perhaps the most unusual, but I also think his second voyage with very little navigational equipment, to be able to do it twice, and then to come back again a third time, makes him the most extraordinary adventurer in the long annals of human history.

We have today our own frontiers, and our own challenges, in space, as Pete Rodino said, in the ocean. We are now able to have submarines navigate under the deep ice floes of the Arctic. We have the great challenges of trying to maintain the peace on this globe and trying to advance the interests of the human race. And we also have the most exciting adventure, I think, here in our own cities, and here in our own country, to make it possible for every American to live a rich and fruitful and productive and prosperous life. That is a challenge which carries with it the greatest responsibility, the greatest burdens, and the greatest opportunities for us all.

So I think that on Columbus Day we do well to recall the past, the 40 million Americans of Italian extraction who followed Columbus. Four of our States now have Governors who are Americans of Italian descent. They serve in the Senate. They serve in the Cabinet--Secretary Celebrezze, of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. They serve as mayors, they serve as Congressmen, they serve as great defenders of our country in time of war, and they serve as distinguished citizens in time of peace. So I think that the long voyage of Columbus, back and out, I think, has been well repaid. And I hope that in 1962 we will meet our responsibilities in this city and country to bear our burdens of maintaining the peace, to contribute to the security of our country, to make it possible especially for the boys and girls of this country to be well educated and to develop their own resources and make their own contribution. I want to express my thanks to all of you for having been kind enough to invite, on this great day in this city, the President of the United States. I'm very glad to be here with all of you and I wish you every success.