Remarks With the Attorney General Upon Presenting the Young American Medals

THE ATTORNEY GENERAL. Mr. President, the committee this year made its first selection for a Young American Medal for Service since 1955. Chosen to receive the medal is Mary Ann Kingry, one of three children of Mr. and Mrs. Vincent Kingry of Saginaw, Mich. Mary Ann was chosen for the service medal because of her outstanding work during 1960 on behalf of the Junior Red Cross, while she maintained an excellent academic record and participated in a variety of other activities. She served as a "resource member" of the Midwestern Area of the American Red Cross, and was chosen as one of the two American representatives at the Canadian Training Center of the Junior Red Cross in Ontario, Canada.

Mary Ann was elected secretary of the Midwestern Area Advisory Council of the Junior Red Cross, was appointed to the member National Youth Council of the American Red Cross, and was the subject of a feature article in the Journal of the American Red Cross.

In other activities she served on her high school student council, was vice president of the Saginaw Youth Council, and president of the City-Wide Senior High Council.

She was elected sophomore representative to the Sodality Club at her high school, Saints Peter and Paul, won numerous school, regional, and state debates, and won honors for her mathematics project entry in the Saginaw Science fair. Mary Ann has continued as a member of the Scholastic Honor Society throughout high school.

It is an unusual award, as I said, Mr. President. It has not been made since 1955. A great deal of study and effort and work is done by the committee to select a proper individual, and she was found to be outstanding for her great contributions to her community and school.

THE PRESIDENT. I want to express my congratulations and appreciation to the committee, the Attorney General, Mr. Hoover, Mr. Cox, Mr. Guthman, who participated in making this study. The Vice President recently predicted that we would some day have a woman President. It might be discounted to a degree, because he was speaking at a women's college. But I do want to say that it seems to me we have a promising candidate here. So I want to express my great pleasure in awarding this to you, which you very richly deserve for a whole variety of public services.

Do you want to say a word?

Mary Ann Kingry: Mr. President, Mr. Attorney General, other honored guests who are too numerous to name, I did not prepare any remarks, but I would only like to say that, of course I am thrilled and I am also very humbled by this award, because I realize that in honoring me you are honoring the countless thousands of other young people who are equally deserving of this award and could very well be here in my spot. There are so many people that go into helping you to win an award like this. There is your wonderful family, and an organization like the American Red Cross, and the people back home at school, your friends. But most of all there is an administration that would care enough about young people to bestow an award like this. So, on behalf of those who will read about this, and all the young people who will get new encouragement from this event, I would like to thank you so much.

THE PRESIDENT. I think that is very nice.

The Attorney General: Will she be old enough in '64? [Laughter]

THE PRESIDENT. That is rushing a little.

The Attorney General: Mr. President, the next award is to Gerald Lee Davis, who is 12 years old. Gerald comes from Ontario, Ore. He was outside his home one day and he saw flames and smoke coming out of the upstairs windows. He rushed in, saw there were flames in front of him, leaped through the flames and rescued his 2 year old brother. He picked him up and bought him down--he was in a corner of the room-he picked him up, brought him down out of the house. The house was then almost enveloped in flames. His mother was outside and called the fire department.

He looked around and saw that one of his brothers was still missing, a 4-year-old boy. So he went back in, through the flames once again. His mother came back and they searched the rooms and found there was one room they could not possibly get into, and still did not find their brother, knew that he must be in there. So his mother pushed him up, he grabbed hold of the banister--lost all of the skin on his hands--he pulled himself up over the banister, went in through the room, still through all of these flames, and brought out his 4-year-old brother. He dropped his brother down to his mother's arms, and then jumped down himself. He went into the hospital where he recovered from being very badly burned.

He was asked at the end of it why he made such an effort, and he said, "I wasn't going to lose my little brother. Flames were not going to keep me away from my brother, so I went anyway."

I might say, Mr. President, he said that he did not understand why he was being called back here, because this did not have anything to do with it. All he wanted to do was rescue his little brother.

THE PRESIDENT. I appreciate that. We want to express our congratulations to this young man and also our pride in him. I am sure that the people of his community and State feel very strongly that this is the best we produce, our best national product, in a sense, which is young men like him. I think his responsibility to his family is the most deserving of recognition, though as he said from the beginning his primary interest was in helping the members of his family.

So we want to congratulate you and tell you that we are very proud to have you here.

Gerald Lee Davis: Thank you very much. [Applause]

The Attorney General: The next award is to Gordon Bernard Kilmer of Reed City, Mich. He is 14 years old. He was out in a boat with a friend, Mark Seath, who is also here, Mr. President. The boat turned over and they yelled for help--Mark Seath is down here, Mr. President.

THE PRESIDENT. Why don't you come up here, Mark?

The Attorney General: They saw some people on the shore, yelled for help, and could not be heard; so they decided to try to swim for it. Mark, who suffers from polio, went about 100 yards, found he could not go any further, and he said to his friend, Gordon, that he didn't think he could go any further; so he started to sink. Gordon grabbed him, pulled him; they had a slight fight. He pulled him for a little while, and then he went under again. He pulled him up again, and had him grab the tail of his dog that was swimming along, and that pulled him for a little while. Then for a third time he went under. He could not grab his hair because he had a crew cut, but he grabbed him by the shirt and pulled him for 400 yards to the shore. Then he listened for his heart and could not hear anything; so he gave him mouth to mouth respiratory help, even though he had never done this before. It brought him back a little bit. He got in a boat, rowed across to the other side to get help, and then rowed back to show the police where to come. This was all done by this young man, again a very, very brave act.

THE PRESIDENT. I want to congratulate you, Gordon. Where is he from?

The Attorney General: He is from Reed City, Mich.

THE PRESIDENT. I want to congratulate you, and you. With so much emphasis on our difficult problems, there is no ceremony more pleasant than to pay much needed recognition to all our young men and women, and particularly to this young man who has been responsible for two young men being here today. So we want to congratulate him and tell him what a pleasure it is.

I want to thank the committee, again, Mr. Hoover coming to participate in this ceremony, and members of the Congress, Congressman Ullman, Senator Hart, Congressman Harvey, Senator Mansfield, Ed Guthman. I think that there is no more appropriate ceremony that we could have here today. So we are glad to have them here and we hope that next year we will have other young boys and girls who will be encouraged by their example. So we are very glad to have you.