    [Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 30, Number 16 (Monday, April 25, 1994)]
    [Pages 853-854]
    [Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

    <R04>
    Remarks on Signing the National Infant Immunization Week Proclamation

    April 20, 1994

        Thank you very much. I want to thank all the people who have
    participated in this wonderful program today and all of you who worked
    to put it together. I want to say a special word of appreciation to
    Secretary Shalala, who is the owner of a current Mustang. [Laughter]
        You know, when we have events like this, sometimes I think that the
    people who are on the stage ought to be out in the audience, and the
    people who are in the audience should be up on the stage, because by and
    large, by the time we have an event like this, what we're doing is
    announcing something that the rest of you have been trying to get us to
    do for 5 or 10 years. [Laughter]
        So I want to begin by just saying to all of you who have labored so
    long in this field, the Members of Congress, the people in our
    administration, to the citizens groups--I'm sorry Mrs. Carter couldn't
    be with us today, but I'm glad Mrs. Bumpers, Mrs. Riegle are here--to
    the advocacy groups, our friend Marian Wright Edelman, the head of the
    Children's Defense Fund, and so many others who are here. You made this
    day possible, and we thank you all for it.
        The second thing I'd like to do is to thank people like Dr. Johnson,
    who are actually out there doing something about all these poor kids
    that a lot of other people just talk about.
        If you think about what the Vice President said and what others said
    about the comparative global statistics and immunization and the trends
    and you think about how many other areas there are like that when our
    country, even though we have a very powerful economy and, thank
    goodness, a growing one with growing jobs where we still have these
    continuing problems, we really, for reasons no one fully understands,
    continue to resist disciplined, community-based organizations where we
    all look after one another without regard to our race or our income.
    We're just not as good at it as we ought to be. And we talk about it a
    lot better than we do it. And I think we all have to admit it. But we
    are trying to do better. And this is a truly remarkable initiative. This
    gives us a chance to put all of our actions where our words are.
        Under our plan, every one of the things we could ever think of to do
    to get kids immunized will be done. And I appreciate what Dr. Johnson
    said about our health care plan because we also try in the health care
    plan to take care of the needs of our children and to do more primary
    and preventive work. And that goes along with the work that Senator
    Kennedy and others have spearheaded to try to expand the reach of Head
    Start to even younger children and to improve its quality.
        We have got to do a better job of dealing with the health, the
    nutrition, the educational, and the emotional needs of our very

    [[Page 854]]

    youngest children if we expect to have the kind of future that America
    deserves.
        Again, let me say to all of you, I am profoundly grateful for the
    work that has been done. I would be remiss if I didn't mention one of my
    pet projects, the national service program, AmeriCorps. Last year, 87 of
    our national service participants, in our very first summer of service,
    helped to immunize over 100,000 children in Texas. And it was a pretty
    good investment. So we will keep doing that. We'll keep working at it.
    Dr. Satcher, Dr. Elders, and others will keep spreading the word. But we
    know in the end, our ability to succeed depends upon the ability of
    grassroots-based community organizations to reach everybody in a
    disciplined way.
        When I saw Secretary Riley sitting out here, I leaned over to
    Hillary and I said, ``You know, you'd think that as long as we've been
    married, we've been asked and answered all the questions.'' I said,
    ``Did you ever get any shots in school?'' [Laughter] And she said,
    ``Yes, I did.'' And I got my shots in school. That's where I got them.
    And then I got to thinking, listening to everybody talk, that our
    generation, all of us baby boomers, who are often known for other
    things, have a great debt to the immunization movement. We were the
    first generation of children in the very first year to be immunized
    against polio. My daughter cannot imagine what it's like to go to school
    as a first grader and be terrified that you're going to get polio and
    spend the rest of your life in an iron lung. But all of us grew up with
    that. Surely, those of us who have tangible, personal experience from
    the benefits of immunization can at long last solve this problem.
        When I was a young man, I read a book by a southern author named
    James Agee about the Great Depression called, ``Let Us Now Praise Famous
    Men.'' Some of you may have seen it. It also has some of the most
    astonishing photographs ever taken by an American photographer, a man
    named Walker Evans. In this book, James Agee said something that I have
    carried with me for a long time now, and I'd like to close with these
    remarks and then get on with the business at hand. He said, in every
    child who is born, no matter what circumstances and no matter what
    parents, the potentiality of the whole human race is born again, and in
    him, too, once more, and of each of us, our terrific responsibility
    toward human life, toward the utmost idea of goodness, of the horror of
    error, and of God. That is what we are here about today. And we are
    bound to do a better job.
        I now want to sign a proclamation designating National Infant
    Immunization Week. And once we've done that, we're going to see an
    example of what it is we are all talking about. We are going to see the
    first infant of the week being immunized, right up here by Dr. Mohammed
    Akhter, the public health commissioner of the District of Columbia. The
    parents are Laura Loeb and Howard Morse, and their wonderful little
    daughter, Elizabeth. And for all of you here who are squeamish, relax;
    she is not going to be immunized with a shot. For all of us who had only
    shots in immunization, we sort of resent it, but--[laughter]--modern
    medical practice has permitted the public alleviation of pain. So let me
    sign the proclamation, and then we'll have the immunization.

    Note: The President spoke at 11:27 a.m. in the Rose Garden at the White
    House. In his remarks, he referred to Betty Bumpers, cofounder, and Lori
    Riegle, spokeswoman, Every Child By Two; Dr. Robert Johnson, director of
    adolescent and young adult medicine, New Jersey Medical School; Dr.
    David Satcher, Director, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. A
    tape was not available for verification of the content of these remarks.