[Federal Register Volume 62, Number 86 (Monday, May 5, 1997)]
[Presidential Documents]
[Pages 24557-24558]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[FR Doc No: 97-11820]


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  Federal Register / Vol. 62, No. 86 / Monday, May 5, 1997 / 
Presidential Documents  

[[Page 24557]]


                Proclamation 6997 of May 1, 1997

                
 Loyalty Day, 1997

                By the President of the United States of America

                A Proclamation

                 Each year, Americans dedicate the first day of May to 
                formally acknowledge our love for this great land and 
                our loyalty to the principles of freedom and equality 
                on which our Nation was founded. This love and loyalty 
                cannot be mandated or legislated; rather, these traits 
                spring freely from our hearts and minds.

                 Looking back across the centuries, we recognize that 
                each generation of Americans has been called upon to 
                express its love and loyalty in a unique way. Our 
                founders, defying the forces of tyranny, solemnly 
                pledged their lives and futures to defend the new 
                Nation they had created, a Nation born of reverence for 
                human rights and the principle of self- determination. 
                Less than a century later, another generation of 
                Americans spilled its blood to preserve the unity of 
                our Nation and to ensure that America lived up to its 
                ideals of freedom, justice, and equality.

                 The challenges of our own century have called for an 
                extraordinary measure of devotion from millions of our 
                citizens. Through two devastating world wars and the 
                decades of the Cold War, Americans laid down their 
                lives for love of country and to defend democracy, 
                advance human rights, and oppose the specter of 
                oppression.

                 Today we are blessed to be living in a time of 
                unprecedented peace and possibility, when the ideals of 
                democracy and human dignity so eloquently articulated 
                by our founders have been widely embraced by nations in 
                our own hemisphere and around the world. But we have 
                fresh opportunities to prove our love and loyalty to 
                America. The challenge for our generation is to realize 
                the promise of our Nation: to be a strong and steady 
                influence for peace and freedom across the globe; to be 
                a powerful voice for human rights wherever they are 
                silenced; to live up to America's promise of justice, 
                equality, and opportunity by ensuring that all of our 
                people have the tools and encouragement they need to 
                meet their God-given potential.

                 The Congress, by Public Law 85-529, has designated May 
                1 of each year as ``Loyalty Day.'' Let us, on this day, 
                remember the contributions of the many courageous 
                Americans who have gone before us, and let us keep 
                faith with them by reaffirming our love for and loyalty 
                to this Nation they sustained with their service and 
                sacrifice.

                NOW, THEREFORE, I, WILLIAM J. CLINTON, President of the 
                United States of America, do hereby proclaim May 1, 
                1997, as Loyalty Day. I urge all Americans to recall, 
                on this day, the valor and selflessness of all those 
                who made this Nation so worthy of our love and loyalty. 
                I call upon Government officials to display the flag of 
                the United States and to participate in patriotic 
                activities in support of this national observance.

[[Page 24558]]

                IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this 
                first day of May, in the year of our Lord nineteen 
                hundred and ninety-seven, and of the Independence of 
                the United States of America the two hundred and 
                twenty-first.

                    (Presidential Sig.)

[FR Doc. 97-11820
Filed 5-2-97; 10:55 am]
Billing code 3195-01-P