John F. Kennedy photo

Remarks at a Breakfast Given by the Wives of Senators and Representatives.

May 02, 1963

Ladies:

From here it makes the White House garden look very inadequate. I want to express pleasure to see all of these flowers blooming in your hair.

I am very glad to be here today representing in a very second-rate way as a substitute for my wife who is engaged in increasing the gross national product in her own way. The most significant guest at our dinner for the Grand Duchess the other night was not the Grand Duchess or the Duke or the Chief Justice, but Dr. Spock who was standing by!

I want to express my very warm congratulations to all of you. I know that Congressmen-and I was one--and Senators are constantly feeling that they are sacrificing everything for the public good, and in many cases they do, but the people who really make an extraordinary sacrifice, it seems to me, are the wives of Congressmen and Senators--a statement which will not be challenged, I am sure--inadequately compensated in many cases, having to maintain two homes, having to educate their children with Congress leaving as it does in September, school beginning in September, having to sustain their husbands in good times and bad, in Washington, on the road. I don't know of any group of Americans who fulfill more effectively the concept we have had traditionally of the American wife as playing a significant role not only in the home but in the community.

I feel that politics is a most rewarding profession, as I am sure all of your husbands do, but it is also very rewarding for women. Except perhaps in the field of teaching, medicine, and one or two other professions, I can't think of any occupation which gives a woman a greater chance to play a more useful role in every way than in the profession of politics. To support your husbands as you do, to have them fulfill their lives in national service, to meet your responsibilities to them, to your children, to your country--I think this is really why there are so many happy women who living under some difficulties yet carry on their work.

So I wanted to come today not merely as a substitute, not merely to meet my responsibilities to my wife, but also because I really feel that you do extraordinary work. And I am delighted to have a chance to tell you that, speaking not so much as President but as a beneficiary of a very effective support from my wife.

So I want to wish you success and to tell you that you have been very kind to have had me as a substitute.

Thank you.

Note: The President spoke in place of Mrs. Kennedy at the Congressional Club's annual breakfast honoring the President's wife. The breakfast was held at the International Inn in Washington.

John F. Kennedy, Remarks at a Breakfast Given by the Wives of Senators and Representatives. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/235998

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