Small Business Awards Remarks at the Presentation Ceremony

THE PRESIDENT. I have to say that if there's one group with whom I've met since I've been President and with whom I've felt at ease and at home and part of it, it's this one here.

A number of years ago, about 10 years, as a matter of fact, I was chosen the outstanding small businessman of Georgia. And when the review was sent in to the Washington office, they realized that I was running for political office that year, for Federal office, and I was excluded from the award. And I've always been very regretful .about that. So, now I feel that I've had to take the second best position, as President.

This is a group which quite often I know serves as an inspiration for your peers at home who study in more detail than you might imagine the particular achievements and problems and the innovative approaches that have made you all successful in being recognized for leadership and for accomplishments.

This is a program that's very good and inspiring, a renewed belief and confidence in the free enterprise system.

We see a lot of very bad publicity about the very few people, primarily in the larger corporations, who have violated laws or who have committed bribery overseas or who've had an improper relationship with political leaders and so forth. But the great and broad tens of thousands of small entrepreneurs who have with a great deal of courage and foresight and confidence started your business or continued one that was there is the backbone of our entire Structural society.

So, I'm proud to be with you. I've also got something else in common with many of you--my own background was not in studying how to be a businessman. I've studied how to be a Naval officer. I was in the Navy for 11 years. And when I came home, I began my own business life. I couldn't make a go of it by myself. So I went to the Small Business Administration for a loan, and they not only gave me an adequate loan in cooperation with the local bank but they followed up that loan with very good and sound and mature and experienced advice.

We had a volunteer businessman who had to retire because of a heart attack who was in his late forties, and he would come down to Plains about once a month as a volunteer to represent the Small Business Administration and to work with me, to teach me about how to handle accounts receivables, to look over the different parts of my business to see which ones were productive and profitable and which ones were not, and to give me advice on how to handle my customer relationships, my loans and service of those loans.

And this was something that was not only instructive for me but kept my head above water in the embryonic stages of my own business effort.

I think it's accurate to say also that my own relatively good experience in business gave me a sound basis on which I could conduct my own broader expansion of interest into politics. And there were many times when I was running for Governor or when I was running for President when I passed through a financial crisis, and my business reservoir of financial stability gave me a chance to overcome an. obstacle that might otherwise have been fatal for me politically.

So, the business and the politics interrelationship in my own life I've never found to be incompatible. I think I'm a better President because I had the experience that you share with me.

The last thing I would like to say is that I hope that under Vernon Weaver, with his own similar background to my own, that we have an Administrator who will enhance the quality of all the Small Business Administration's functions, that there will be an understanding, a comprehension, a sensitivity about the needs of those like myself 15 or 20 years ago who did need help, and I hope that he will have confidence in those who deserve confidence and a special preoccupation with how to follow up a financial loan with a personal relationship to the borrower that might be both instructive and supportive.

The other thing I'd like to comment about is the special award program. I was kind of hoping that my brother would win--[laughter]--would win this year. But when they checked on his record, he was about one-tenth businessman and about nine-tenths entertainer. So he turned out to be not qualified.

But I was very delighted and I must say to some degree quite surprised at the coincidence that a former boyhood friend of mine, a man from Plains who moved off and then came back to an adjacent town, Larry Comer, has been chosen as the outstanding small businessman of our country.

From a distance I've seen his own achievement, not only in starting a business absolutely from scratch but making a contribution to the entire community structure that's admirable in every possible way. And I can vouch for the fact that his qualifications are superb. I know it was a difficult choice among all the other competitors who competed, just by doing your own jobs, not seeking an, award, but I think it's gratifying to know that that choice has been made with a great attention to his unique and superb achievements.

He's a fine young man who has exemplified, I think, the small business community in almost a perfect fashion. He's honest and sincere. He's competent and well-respected, and I think he does show that a confidence in our own system and a confidence in one's self and a realization of a need for cooperation with a peer group and good working relationships, both with suppliers and customers, is an integral part of any success in business in our system. This commitment to self-reliance and basic human freedom and a confidence in our own Nation is something that we all share.

So, I congratulate Larry Comer and know that all of you join with me in wishing him well in the future and recognizing that he does represent the finest aspects of our own lives as small business people in the greatest country on Earth. Thank you very much.

I would like now to deliver this award. It says: "The United States of America Small Business Administration presents the National Small Business Person of the Year Award 1977 to Larry Comer for exemplifying the imagination, initiative, independence, and integrity by which the American small business person makes a vital contribution to the Nation, to the economy and to the free enterprise system." And it's signed "Vernon Weaver." Congratulations.

MR. COMER. Thank you very much, Mr. President.

I am sure that we all know that SBA is a great institution. And on behalf of all SBA business persons here, we accept this award.

Thank you again.

THE PRESIDENT. I didn't know that he was here, but that fine volunteer businessman who came down to Plains to help me is on my left, Tom Perry, and I thank you again, Tom. It's just great to see you again.