[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 33, Number 26 (Monday, June 30, 1997)]
[Pages 937-938]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks to Summit of the Eight Volunteers in Denver

June 22, 1997

    The President. Thank you.
    Audience member. Teachers love you, Mr. President!
    The President. Well, I love the teachers, too, so I thank you very, 
very much.
    Let me say, first of all, my heart is full of gratitude to all of 
you this afternoon--to my long-time friends Governor and Mrs. Romer; to 
Mayor and Mrs. Webb for the astonishing work that they have done on 
this. I thank Lieutenant Governor Gail Schoettler and the other members 
of the host committee. I want to say a special word of thanks to Donna 
Goode and Mike Dino for the work they did. Thank you very much. And a 
special word of thanks to the leaders of our team here, Harold Ickes and 
Debbie Willhite for the work they did.
    I had this idea, when the time came for America to host the summit--
you know, the easy thing to do when you host a summit like this is to go 
to a really big city and put everybody up in a really fancy hotel and go 
hear the orchestra on Saturday night or something. And I think that's a 
good thing to do, by the way. But what I was trying to do with this 
summit--I tried to figure out, where could we have this summit where 
people could get a flavor of the natural beauty

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of our country that is unique, the sort of frontier spirit of our 
country that is unique, but our common commitment, first of all, to 
shaping the future and embracing it, and secondly, to doing it together, 
across the lines that too often divide people in this old world? And 
Denver seemed to me to be the logical place to do that. And I think I 
made a good decision and you helped to make it so.
    The other leaders commented to me on many things. The people who got 
to take the train loved the train. They all loved the fort last night. 
They loved the buffalo meat, the horse show, and the double rainbow, 
which I said--and they all said they didn't know the Federal Government 
had control over rainbows. They were quite impressed. [Laughter] They 
loved the sort of panorama of American musical history that was put on. 
And I thank everybody who worked on that. That was an enormous effort 
and a very impressive one, and I thank you for that.
    But the thing they all kept coming back to was how wonderfully 
friendly the people were, how genuinely glad they were to see them, and 
how respectful they were of the nations they represented and the work 
they were here to do, and what an upbeat atmosphere prevailed. I mean, 
the human climate and the human warmth they felt is the thing I think 
they'll take away from here, more than anything.

And I think you can be very, very proud of that because I know that the 
volunteers were principally responsible for making sure that they all felt 
that way.

    Let me just finally say, you know, these summits are interesting 
affairs; they rarely produce some searing headline on some great issue, 
but they--I have done quite a number of them now, in Japan and in Italy 
and in Canada and in France and now this one here, and I can tell you an 
enormous amount of what countries do together to make this world a 
better place and to beat back the problems of the world germinates from 
the work we do at these summits and the way we get to know each other 
the way we get to understand one another's countries and cultures and 
political environments and the sense of common purpose we have. Again, I 
think it wells up more from the people than anything else.
    So, when you go home tonight, after you have your party and your 
celebration and all the things Hillary talked about and you put your 
head on the pillow before you go to sleep, I hope you'll take a great 
deal of pride in the fact that you have made a personal contribution to 
creating a world of tomorrow in which there is more peace, more 
prosperity, more freedom, and more harmony. That is what we are working 
for. And we made a real step forward in the last couple of days, thanks 
in no small measure to you.
    Thank you, and God bless you.

Note: The President spoke at 3:53 p.m. in Currigan Hall at the 
Convention Center. In his remarks, he referred to Gov. Roy Romer of 
Colorado and his wife, Bea; Mayor Wellington E. Webb of Denver and his 
wife, Wilma; Lt. Gov. Gail Schoettler of Colorado; Donna Goode, director 
of the host committee; and Mike Dino, executive director, City of Denver 
Task Force for the Summit.