Mr. Chairman and fellow citizens gathered at Ponca City:
It is a pleasure both to address a great audience gathered to do honor to the pioneer women and to support my friend, the Secretary of War, who, to your and my misfortune, cannot yet leave his room from recent illness, from which happily he is on the road to recovery.
There are few men of the West of my generation who did not know the pioneer woman in his own mother, and who does not rejoice to know that her part in building that great civilization is to have such beautiful recognition. It was those women who carried the refinement, the moral character, and spiritual force into the West. Not only they bore great burdens of daily toil and the rearing of families, but they were intent that their children should have a chance, that the doors of opportunity should be open to them. It was their insistence which made the schools and the churches.
But it is my duty to introduce a product of the pioneer woman of Oklahoma who has risen high in the councils of the Nation--and high in the esteem of the whole country--the Secretary of War, Patrick J. Hurley.
Note: The President spoke from his office in the White House via radio to the unveiling ceremonies at Ponca City, Okla. Following the President's introduction, Secretary of War Patrick J. Hurley spoke from a study in his home in Washington, D.C.
The statue of the Pioneer Woman, conceived and executed by Bryant Baker, was erected by E. W. Marland to commemorate the fortitude and courage of the frontier woman.
Herbert Hoover, Remarks on the Unveiling of the Statue of the Pioneer Woman. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/210173
