Remarks to Patients and Staff at Greenbriar Nursing Home, Nashua, New Hampshire.

Governor Peterson, Senator Cotton, Senator McIntyre, Congressman Cleveland, Congressman Wyman, and ladies and gentlemen:

I have just had the opportunity to visit a number of the patients in this nursing home, and also, just as important, to meet a great many members of the staff. You see representatives of both groups here, with the members of the staff behind.

In my brief remarks I would like to tell you why, first, we came to this, of all of the thousands of institutions of this type around the country that we could have selected. This institution has been selected as among the top 10 percent in all of America in terms of quality, in terms, also, of the services that are provided for the funds that are provided by those who are the patients.

We selected one of the best to come to because, by selecting the best, we want it to be an example for others throughout the Nation. Some of you may recall that in Chicago, in speaking to the American Association of Retired Persons a few weeks ago, I referred to the fact that there were many institutions of this type for older people and disabled people that were a disgrace, and that it was absolutely essential that the Federal Government do everything that it could through its programs to upgrade them, upgrade them so that people in the last years of their lives who live in places like this, institutions like this, could have a good life and not a life of hopelessness and desperation.

We have that program now initiated. I have issued a major statement here today in Nashua concerning the new initiatives that the Administration is taking to use the power of the Federal Government, through inspection and through the programs where we provide financial assistance, to see to it that these institutions throughout the country have a higher standard than they presently have.

So we have come to one of the best to show what can be done, not only with money but also, particularly, what can be done with regard to the personnel.

As I went through this building, and as Mrs. Nixon went through it, we were very inspired to meet those who are the patients here. Here are some of them back here. They are in wheelchairs. You would think that they would have a hopeless, despairing attitude about life, but as a matter of fact, I went in to cheer them up; they cheered me up, because they feel that they have good care, and also they have an optimistic attitude about life.

Now, there is a reason for that. One, because of their own character, which comes from this New England soil in which most of them have grown up, but also, the other reason is because the nurses and all the others who work in this institution are proud to work here, and because they do not treat these patients as a burden. As they go from one to the other, they try to make each day a happier day for them

Accompanying me on this trip today in addition to the distinguished Members of the Senate and the House of Representatives, and the Governor who is here, is the wife of one of the most powerful men in Washington, the Director of the Office of Budget and Management, Mrs. George Shultz. She is from New Hampshire. She was a nurse. And she set an example in her own life of what nursing can mean and what it can do.

In speaking today about what the Government will do--the Federal Government-to upgrade our nursing homes for the elderly, upgrade them so that, as near as possible, they can be as fine as this one, let me say, we can build finer buildings, vie can provide more money; but what really counts are the people who work here, the nurses, the supervisors, and people up and down the line, because the fine buildings, and the good view and the good weather that we had today would mean nothing if you had a sourpuss coming in that room every day to say good morning to you.

I simply want to pay tribute to the wonderful nurses, thousands of them--thousands I will never meet--who dedicate their lives to this profession and who make the people they work with a little happier because they are there.

Let me say, finally, I speak with somewhat a personal feeling here because my mother, in the last year of her life, had had a disabling stroke, and she was in a rest home during that period. When I went to see her, I couldn't tell whether she recognized me or not. I always rather thought she did. But I am always grateful and will always be grateful for the fact that the nurses that were in that room treated her with such love and such attention. I will never forget it.

So today I think all of us who are fortunate enough to be well, and walking, and who have our mothers or our grandmothers or, as the case might be, some other relative who may be in a home like this--all of us want to extend our appreciation and our thanks to those who maintain such institutions as this, to those who, in addition to simply providing the food, sometimes the clothing, sometimes the rooms, all these material things, provide something that money cannot buy: affection, caring, really wanting to see that the individuals who are here have a better day and a better life by reason of what they are able to provide in raising their spirits.

Thank you very much.