Proclamation 5301—National DECA Week, 1985

The value of the free enterprise system in America is confirmed when the products of our research, our industry, and our agriculture improve the quality of people's lives not only in America, but throughout the world. And the genius of American business has been to make the wealth of its factories and farms accessible to all.

For thirty-eight years, the Distributive Education Clubs of America have introduced high school and college students to the challenges, skills, and responsibilities of delivering the products of our free enterprise system to those who use them. Now numbering some 150,000 members in all 50 States, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico, the Distributive Education Clubs of America are helping to prepare a cadre of professionals with the spirit of enterprise, the civic responsibility, and the complex skills needed to assure that America's strength in marketing keeps pace with the vast expansion of technology and the increasingly sophisticated needs of people in all parts of the world.

To give special recognition to the valuable contribution the Distributive Education Clubs of America are making to maintaining our Nation's economic strength and to introducing young Americans to the opportunities and rewards of free enterprise, the Congress, by Senate Joint Resolution 36, has designated the week of February 10, 1985, through February 16, 1985, as "National DECA Week" and authorized and requested the President to issue a proclamation in observance of that week.

Now, Therefore, I, Ronald Reagan, President of the United States of America, do hereby proclaim the week beginning February 10 through February 16, 1985, as National DECA Week, and I call upon all government agencies, interested organizations, community groups, and the people of the United States to observe this week with appropriate programs, ceremonies, and activities.

In Witness Whereof, I have hereunto set my hand this twelfth day of February, in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and eighty-five, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and ninth.

RONALD REAGAN