Remarks Upon Presenting the President's Award for Distinguished Federal Civilian Service

Secretary Ball, Mr. Macy, distinguished award recipients, members of the Cabinet, my friends in the Congress, ladies and gentlemen:

We have come here this morning to honor five distinguished career employees of the Federal Government for their most unusual and outstanding service to this country. They are all men who are rich in experience. They are also innovators. In their separate fields each of them has displayed that initiative and imagination which mark the creative man in every profession. So it is our very good fortune as a Nation that they do not stand alone even when they stand out. They have been helped and supported along their separate paths by what I believe to be a first-rate civil service in this country.

Many young nations in the world are reaching for a fairer share of the 20th century's progress. Their demands are just; their needs are many. These young struggling nations--all of them--need more food, more industry, more capital, more goods, and more technology. But no nation has a need that is more important than their need for trained, dependable, competent manpower,

We know from our own history how very important is the fair administration of laws by men who place the country's welfare always above their own. That is one definition of a truly good and great public servant.

In our day, tired answers to old problems will just not do. The problems we have are so complex that often even the most inspired solution will prove barely adequate. So this places a very special and great responsibility on the civil servant in this country. Today I look to the Federal career service to produce for this Government men and women of broad vision, with new answers, with good ideas. And we ask them to consider not merely their own department, not only the Federal Government, but the future of this land. When we find such men, I take a peculiar pleasure and delight in honoring them. That is what we are doing here today with the gentlemen who are the recipients of this award.

First, Dr. Elson B. Helwig, who has made the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology an institute of world renown.

Second, Mr. Robert E. Hollingsworth, who has used imaginative methods within the Atomic Energy Commission to liberate and to encourage the fullest expression of the creative energies of his staff.

Third, Mr. H. Rex Lee, who as Governor of American Samoa helped that tropical island to become, in 5 years, a place of progress and vitality.

Fourth, Mr. Thomas C. Mann, who has represented this great Nation at home and abroad with diligence, with intelligence, with great foresight and good judgment for almost a quarter of a century in some of the most important, the most difficult, the most harassing posts which any public servant could occupy.

And, finally, Dr. James A. Shannon, who is one of our chiefs of staff in the war on disease. His deployment of men and resources in that war have led, if not yet to victory, have led to the continuing retreat of heart disease and cancer and many other medical enemies of man that we feel today we have on the run. So I have asked you, their families, some of their special friends, and some of the elite in our Federal civil service to come here and join me today in honoring these men--in honoring the career of the civil service, of which they are excellent symbols. The gentlemen here, by their past accomplishments can give all of us renewed confidence in the future of this land and our dedicated civil service to which we already owe so

much.

I appreciate your presence here this morning and I have attempted, in my own way, to express the debt to these individuals that I feel a grateful nation owes them.

Thank you very much.