Remarks to the Members of the American Helicopter Society.

President Alex, and my friends:

You will have noted that there have been a number of awards given this evening by the helicopter association, and until I stood up, all of them had been given in recognition of contributions made by these several individuals to the advancement of the helicopter as a vehicle for human travel. In my case, it was not what I did for helicopters, it's what helicopters did for me. And I think it's only appropriate, therefore, that I should try briefly to describe some of the things that they have done for me.

First of all, while it might have been possible for me to make three or four trips in the recent months that I have already completed without the use of the helicopter and the jet transport, it would indeed have been difficult and none of those trips could have been so extensive as it was. The saving of time in the great capitals of the world, in these large cities where often there are throngs gathered along the route are of course carefully scheduled as you come into the city, but in order to save valuable time as you go along to the next country, the helicopter is almost always used to go back to the airport, and occasionally indeed, to come in, as I believe was the case in Montevideo.

Without that kind of service, and the jet airplane, these trips would have been well nigh impossible. The convenience, the lack of wear and tear on the disposition, which at times wears thin anyway, I think, are among the advantages that all habitual users of helicopters are bound to experience. They are particularly, of course, useful in all the areas of crowded streets. When you have a traffic jam and you can hop over it and look down at it, two things happen. First, the Secret Service is not halting all of that traffic and therefore inspiring a good many hundreds, or thousands possibly, of people to despise your insides, but you yourself get such an exhilarated feeling. Boy, you look down and you say, "I don't have to work my way through that!"

In every kind of short trip from the city, where we find them appropriate, they are used invariably. To the units that have just been decorated this evening by your chairman, I owe a very great debt of gratitude. More than that, I owe my grateful thanks to the helicopter industry, to its presidents, its engineers, the people that support and believe in it--and indeed, also, to those other people who just use it.

Because I believe that as the advantages of this machine come more and more home to the consciousness of the American people, we will find a lot of travel that is much safer, at least in my opinion, than that on the road and possibly in the speedier airplane--fixed plane, that has to go, in any event, to fields of long runways. I land ordinarily at the back door of my farm, for example, after having taken off from the back door of the White House. And that is a great convenience, I assure you.

So as I express my thanks for this award, which really should have been given to all who have had a part in making the helicopter so useful, I say: good luck to all of you, and may your machines grow in numbers, and size, and one other item--silence.