Remarks in Westland, Michigan

Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, Sept 23, 1996

The President. Thank you very much. Well, this is a pretty active crowd, even in the back there. Can you hear me? Good. Thank you, Brian Duka. Now, I think he did a pretty good job. How many of you could stand up here in front of 10,000 or 12,000 people and do that? Give him a hand. Give him a hand. That's great [Applause]

I want to say thank you to the John Glenn choral group and the marching band. Thank you for playing and for singing for us. Thank you, Congresswoman Lynn Rivers, for the power of your example, for fighting for education, including vocational education, for having a terrific, positive impact in Congress in such a short time, and for helping me to fight against the effort to cut education, the environment, Medicare and Medicaid, fighting against the Government shutdown, fighting against things that would have divided and weakened this country. You stood strong for the people of Michigan and the people of the United States. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Bill Ford, for being here, for all of the work you did in the 2 years we shared together, to expand Head Start, improve college loans, open the doors of opportunity to millions of more young people in so many different ways. Thank you, Dr. Moore, Principal Thomas, William Ford Career Center Principal Bill Richardson. Thank you, my good friend Ed MacNamara, the Wayne County executive.

Thank you, Mayor Thomas. We're glad to be in Westland. I understand I am the first President to come to Westland. I'll tell you something folks, they get a good look at you on the evening news tonight, I won't be the last President to come to Westland, I can promise you that.

I'm glad to be joined today by Barbara Levin, the wife of Senator Carl Levin, a man I hope you will send back to the Senate to work with us. And Representative Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick and Eileen DeHart, thank you for being here. I want to thank the people who showed me around at the William Ford Career Center, Dr. Glen Baracy, Bill Richardson - the principal over there. And Todd Hoag and Craig Lindberg, an instructor and a student, who were terrific; I thank them.

I understand that the John Glenn Rockets are 2 and 0. Congratulations! I think it is a great thing - let me say, as a man who is a friend of Senator John Glenn, I think it's a great thing for me to be at this school, named after one of the great American heroes of the last 50 years. And I want you to know that, by pure coincidence, I was in Cincinnati, Ohio, with John Glenn yesterday and believe it or not, aboard Air Force One he actually wrote me this letter, which I'm going to give to the high school principal for the school's records when I finish.

But I want you to know what it said. I want to read this letter to you, because it starts out in the way I would like to start this talk, anyway. Here's what John Glenn said. "I am particularly sorry I could not come to Westland today, but I'm sure you will agree the program is in good hands with the President. I have been fortunate to receive some honors in my life, but none have ever made me more proud than have a school bear my name. We've all been lucky to be born in a time in our Nation's history when many notable things have happened and will continue to happen, I've always been more than grateful that I've been able to participate in some of those events on behalf of this great country of ours. To your generation, the opportunities are boundless and education is your key. What you are learning today will enable you to out-distance anything we have ever dreamed of. To every student, good luck; I know you will make us proud. Sincerely, John Glenn."

A generation ago, Senator Glenn reached for the stars and became the first American astronaut to orbit the Earth. Since then, he has shown us that the sky is not the limit.

Audience members, Dole-Kemp! Dole-Kemp!

The President. I don't blame them for doing this. They don't want you to hear the truth. It would bother them.

Audience members. Boo-o-o!

The President. Wait, don't boo them. Don't boo them. We're glad to have them here, but we recognize free speech. You had your turn; now it's mine. And what I want you to think about today is what was in that letter John Glenn wrote to you. I want every American, without regard to age, to have the opportunity to live up to his or her potential. To reach that potential, we have to build a bridge to the 21st century we can all walk across. And the foundation for that bridge has got to be the world's finest education system available to all Americans of all ages.

That is more true today than ever before. As I said when I was working on a book I wrote recently, I was trying to think of a title for it, and I remembered a poem that was read to me when I was in Ireland about magic points when hope and history come together. This is such a time.

The 21st century will give more people more chances to live out their dreams than any period in human history. Let me just give you one little example. The United States has just contracted with IBM to build a supercomputer that will be more calculations in one second than you can go home and do on your hand-held calculator in 30,000 years.