[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 128 (Tuesday, September 17, 1996)]
[House]
[Pages H10436-H10437]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




[[Page H10436]]



ARTHUR SHERWOOD FLEMMING--ONE OF OUR CENTURY'S GREATEST PUBLIC SERVANTS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of May 
12, 1995, the gentleman from California [Mr. Horn] is recognized during 
the morning business for 5 minutes.
  Mr. HORN. Mr. Speaker, last week one of America's great citizens 
passed away at the age of 91, Arthur S. Flemming. He grew up in upstate 
New York where his father was a lawyer, an active Republican, and an 
active Methodist. But instead of pursuing the family tradition in the 
law after he graduated from Ohio Wesleyan, Arthur came to Washington 
during the Coolidge administration. He joined David Lawrence on what 
later became the weekly U.S. News and World Report. His assignment was 
to cover the Supreme Court of the United States.
  During the 1930's he became more and more interested in the evolution 
of public administration as an academic discipline. He became the 
founding dean of the School of Public Affairs at the American 
University in Washington. President Franklin D. Roosevelt tapped him to 
fill the Republican slot on the U.S. Civil Service Commission. For 
almost a decade his Democratic colleagues yielded to him to run the 
Commission. So he was in charge of the policies to build a larger 
civilian work force as the Second World War came and went.
  Following the war, President Truman utilized Flemming's skills as 
assistant director of defense mobilization. After President Eisenhower 
was elected in 1952, Flemming was made director. He sat with Eisenhower 
in the White House as the President listened to the Vice President, the 
Secretary of State, the Chief of Naval Operations, and others all try 
to urge him to go to the aid of the French troops who were surrounded 
at Dien Bien Phu in Vietnam. The President listened very carefully and 
after several hours of discussion said, we will not go to the aid of 
the French; and the President was right, America should not have been 
involved in the conflict in Vietnam and except for a few hundred 
advisers who could not be in the battles, our Nation never was during 
the Eisenhower administration.
  In 1958, the President made Arthur Flemming the Secretary of Health, 
Education, and Welfare. During the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, 
Flemming served on the National Advisory Commission of the Peace Corps. 
Being a dedicated teacher, educator at heart, Flemming spent most of 
the 1960's as president of the University of Oregon and, later, 
Macalester College in St. Paul. In the late 1940's, he had been a 
university president during the Truman administration. He was mostly in 
Washington as assistant director of the Office of Defense Mobilization. 
But on weekends, he would take the train to his alma mater, Ohio 
Wesleyan, and provide leadership by holding faculty meetings on 
Saturdays. Arthur was probably the only college president in America 
who could get away with that.
  His energy and determination were endless. His oratory could move an 
audience to action.

                              {time}  1315

  Whether he was the chairman of the National Council of Churches or 
heading Senator Jacob K. Javits' Task Force on Health Care, which 
worked on bills that were the precursor of Medicare in the middle 
sixties, Flemming always had the public interest at heart.
  With the coming of the Nixon administration, in 1969, he became the 
head of the White House Conference on Aging and the Administrator of 
the Aging Program, in the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare 
where a decade before he had served as Secretary. Flemming was one of 
only two Cabinet officers who went back to the Department in which they 
had served as a Cabinet member. Public service was his calling. 
Flemming's commitment to public administration was all encompassing. He 
was one of the founding and most esteemed members of the National 
Academy of Public Administration. In the late 1940's and early 1950's, 
he had served on the two Hoover commissions on organization of the 
executive branch of the Government. President Truman had brought former 
President Hoover out of retirement.
  In the mid-1970's, President Nixon asked Arthur Flemming to serve as 
Chairman of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.
  Mr. Speaker, served as vice chairman with him for most of his tenure 
there. Arthur always saw the positive side and the good in people. He 
was constantly in motion. Whatever ``hat'' he was wearing at the time 
meant flying to make a speech to help bring people together. He would 
have written the speech himself and composed it on his faithful 
typewriter. His skills as a journalist never left him.
  Mr. Speaker, Dr. Arthur S. Flemming was one of the great public 
servants of this century. He cared. He was dedicated. He was the 
epitome of distinguished public service and proof that one citizen who 
cares can, indeed, make a difference.
  Mr. Speaker, I enclose the Flemming obituary which appeared in The 
Washington Post on September 9, 1996.

               [From the Washington Post, Sept. 9, 1996]

   Arthur Flemming Dies; Key Adviser To Presidents From FDR to Reagan

                            (By Martin Weil)

       Arthur S. Flemming, 91, a former Health, Education and 
     Welfare secretary who championed the aged and ill during a 
     decades-long and much-admired public service career under 
     presidents from Roosevelt to Reagan, died Sept. 7, in 
     Alexandria.
       Described as a role model to generations of government 
     officials and social activists, Mr. Flemming also was known 
     for his commitment to education and to civil rights. He was 
     president of three colleges and was chairman of the U.S. 
     Civil Rights Commission from 1972 to 1981.
       In government, he was a chairman of the old Civil Service 
     Commission and one of the major figures in the mobilization 
     of the government civilian work force during World War II. A 
     man to whom religion was important, he was an active 
     Methodist layman and had headed the National Council of 
     Churches of Christ in America.
       As depicted by those who knew and worked with him both in 
     public life and in his many private roles, Mr. Flemming 
     possessed a rare and perhaps unequaled combination of 
     bureaucratic competence, compassion for the needy and ability 
     to inspire that endured from the New Deal into the `90s.
       He ``was one of the great intellects of social policy, 
     combining extraordinary knowledge with a rare gift for 
     policy-making,'' said Donna E. Shalala, Secretary of Health 
     and Human Services, a successor department of HEW. ``He never 
     stopped fighting for the elderly and the poor.''
       Mr. Flemming's tenure as HEW secretary ran from 1958 to 
     1961. He served under President Dwight D. Eisenhower, a 
     Republican, and was himself a Republican. But Mr. Flemming 
     ``transcended party, generation and race in search of 
     consensus on some of the great issues of our day,'' President 
     Clinton said in a statement.
       Mr. Flemming had lived for the last four years at 
     Washington House, a retirement home in Alexandria, but his 
     son Thomas said he traveled each day to work in the District, 
     where he was active in such groups as Save Our Security, a 
     Social Security advocacy group.
       According to John Rother, legislative director of the 
     American Association of Retired Persons, the speech Mr. 
     Flemming gave just last year to the White House Conference on 
     Aging was considered the ``highlight of the conference.''
       Thomas Flemming said his father's health had deteriorated 
     since a fall in his downtown office building about a month 
     ago. Mr. Flemming's death in the clinic of Washington House 
     was attributed to acute renal failure, his son said.
       Mr. Flemming was born June 12, 1905, in Kingston, N.Y., the 
     son of Harry Hardwicke Flemming, a lawyer who was an active 
     Methodist layman. Mr. Flemming worked for a year after high 
     school graduation as a newspaper reporter and then entered 
     Ohio Wesleyan University, where he was a member of the 
     Republican Club.
       After graduation, he came to Washington. He received a 
     master's degree in political science from American 
     University, where he also taught government and served as 
     debate coach. In the early 1930s, Mr. Flemming, known for his 
     ability to juggle a vast array of activities, received a law 
     degree from George Washington University; covered the Supreme 
     Court as a reporter for the old United States Daily, which 
     later became U.S. News & World Report; and directed American 
     University's School of Public Affairs. He also edited a 
     current affairs newspaper for high school students.
       In 1939, President Franklin D. Roosevelt tapped him for 
     what became a nine-year stint as a member of the Civil 
     Service Commission. He held key government personnel posts 
     during World War II and was a member of the Hoover 
     commissions, which studied the organization of the federal 
     executive branch, from 1947 to 1949 and again from 1953 to 
     1955.
       From 1948 to 1953 and 1957 to 1958, he served as president 
     of Ohio Wesleyan. For part of his tenure, he worked in 
     Washington at federal posts during the week, returning to 
     Ohio and his collegiate duties on weekends.
       Throughout the Eisenhower administration, he was a member 
     of the President's Advisory Committee on Government 
     Organization, serving as its chairman from 1958 to

[[Page H10437]]

     1961. During the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, he was 
     a member of the Peace Corps National Advisory Commission.
       He also was president of the University of Oregon from 1961 
     to 1968 and president of Macalester College in St. Paul, 
     Minn., from 1968 to 1971. He was chairman of the White House 
     Conference on Aging in 1971 and was appointed U.S. 
     commissioner on aging during the Nixon administration.
       In trying to characterize his career, Mr. Flemming, 
     according to his son, often adopted words first used by 
     Roosevelt. Mr. Flemming would frequently say that he was 
     trying ``to help people deal with the hazards and 
     vicissitudes of life.''
       One of the ways in which he tried to do that, according to 
     Robert J. Myers, former chief actuary of the Social Security 
     system, was in trying to preserve and strengthen Social 
     Security.
       ``He was always very much interested in doing this and 
     doing it soundly,'' Myers said.
       Mr. Flemming received the Presidential Medal of Freedom two 
     years ago from President Clinton.
       In addition to his son Thomas, of Alexandria, survivors 
     include his wife, Bernice, of Washington; two other sons, 
     Arthur H., of South Pasadena, Calif., and Harry, of 
     Alexandria; a daughter, Elizabeth Speece of Delaware, Ohio; a 
     sister, Elizabeth Sherbondy of Pittsburgh; 12 grandchildren; 
     and 12 great-grandchildren. A daughter, Susan Parker died in 
     1993.

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