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Congressional Gold Medal.com |
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Congressional Gold Medal Recipient
Hubert H. Humphrey
Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey Hubert H. Humphrey b. Wallace, Codington, South Dakota, 27 May 1911
d. Waverly, Wright, Minnesota, 13 January 1978
Wednesday, 13 June 1979
An Act Authorizing the President of the United States to present a gold medal to the widow of Hubert H. Humphrey. Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That (a) the President is authorized to present in the name of Congress, an appropriate gold medal to Mrs. Hubert H. Humphrey, in recognition of the distinguished and dedicated service which her late husband gave to the Government and to the people of the United States. For such purposes, the Secretary of the Treasury shall cause to be struck a gold medal with suitable emblems, devices, and inscriptions to be determined by the Secretary. There are authorized to be appropriated not to exceed $15,000 to carry out the provisions of this subsection. (b) The Secretary of the Treasury may cause duplicates in bronze of such medal to be coined and sold under such regulations as he may prescribe, at a price sufficient to cover the cost thereof, including labor, materials, dies, use of machinery, overhead expenses, and the cost of the gold medals, and the appropriation used for carrying out the provisions of this subsection shall be reimbursed out of the proceeds of such sale. (c) The medals provided for in this section are national medals for the purpose of section 3551 of the Revised Statutes (31 U.S.C. 368).
93 Stat. 46
Remarks at the Presentation Ceremony of the Congressional Gold Medal Honoring Hubert H. Humphrey September 11, 1984 - The President. Ladies and gentlemen, honored guests, and most especially, Muriel Humphrey Brown, we're here to honor one of American political history's great happy warriors. Hubert Horatio Humphrey was the mayor of a great midwestern city. He was a United States Senator for 23 years. He was majority whip for his party in the Senate. He was Vice President of the United States. He ran for President three times and won the nomination of his party in 1968, when he came within a few hundred thousand votes of the Presidency. Now, these are the facts of his career, but somehow they don't quite capture him. To get a surer sense of his real dimensions one must speak of his nature, his character, his personality. There was in Hubert Humphrey a great joy of life and a truly buoyant civility. He was robust and energetic. He loved the battle. He was warm and affectionate. He was hearty and spirited. And he was nothing if not effusive. When he spoke, the words poured out of him. Some said he was deeply, endlessly articulate, and then there were others that said he was downright garrulous. [Laughter] But either way, he'd laugh when someone said he'd never had an unuttered thought. [Laughter] He was a masterful politician. Issues were everything to him, mere strategy a bore. He was no bully; his art was persuasion. He asked that he be remembered as ``an effective man of government,'' and he was certainly that. He lived in clamorous times, but he was ever optimistic. He was involved in all the great struggles of his time, and he tried to affect them, always for the better. In 1948 he touched the conscience of his party when he took the floor of the Democratic Convention to make a passionate appeal for civil rights. In the sixties, he was deeply involved in the struggle that followed the U.S. commitment to Vietnam. He was a liberal who was an internationalist, a liberal who understood that America was great and has serious responsibilities in the world, a liberal who was strongly anti-Communist. He loved justice. He believed our Constitution is a living document that is reborn every day. He was a passionate democrat -- small ``d'' and big ``D'' -- who tried to make the world better according to his lights. And no one was better than he at infusing his followers with a fighting spirit. Hubert Humphrey was generous. After John Kennedy beat him in the Democratic primaries of 1960, he dropped out of the race and went to work to elect Kennedy President. It wasn't pro forma, the campaigning that he did for Kennedy, it was real. And when J.F.K. won the White House, Majority Whip Humphrey mobilized his constituencies, mustered his majorities, and helped J.F.K. get the Congress to pass such legislation as the Peace Corps. He may have been generous to a fault. He was famously patient with human frailty, and it was said that you could hurt him with impunity. Once, an old friend betrayed him and it damaged Humphrey politically. Another friend, a fellow Senator, took him aside and said, ``Hubert, I know you're not going to be rough with so-and-so after he did what he did to you, but couldn't you at least be mad at him for 2 weeks?'' [Laughter] Humphrey probably laughed and shook his head and refused. It isn't possible to exaggerate the number of people who considered him their friend. Thirty years after his great career began, 30 years after he was elected the youngest mayor ever of Minneapolis, Hubert Humphrey was told that he was dying. He fought his sickness with the same spirit with which he'd lived his life. A week after his last operation, Humphrey showed up at an AFL - CIO convention to give a long-promised speech. He was thin and wan and his hair had gone white. He began his speech, ``I may start out a little wobbly, but I'm going to end up damn strong.'' He spoke for almost an hour, and he pounded the lectern so hard it jumped. In the last few weeks of his life, as he lay dying, an amazing healing process began. He got a WATS line, and he called his old friends and his old adversaries and one after one he told them, ``I wish you well.'' And the calls came in, too, from all across the country. Old opponents called in, and young people just entering politics. Powerful political figures called, and obscure farmers. It was as if all of them were trying to reconnect with a part of an unchanging political past, trying to touch for the last time a special spirit and a special style that would go with Hubert Humphrey's passing. It's said that a lot of love passed along the lines those last few days. There was a lot of forgiving and a lot of encouraging and a lot of sharing of wisdom. His passing left Washington a lesser place. He left a big silence behind him. He was a fine man, a patriot. And he understood that though good men and women can disagree on this issue or that, we must always stay bound by a common love of country. Hubert Humphrey was a robust and active player in the dramas of our time for more than 30 years. He was a vivid presence on the scene. And looking back over his career, it's fair to say that his greatest contribution to his country was his life, a life that affirmed the vitality of democracy, affirmed the fact that the democratic process is alive and full of movement and action and great plans and decent dreams. I'm very proud today and very honored to present to Mrs. Muriel Humphrey Brown the Congressional Gold Medal for distinguished service to the Federal Government and the American people in honor of the great, happy warrior: Hubert Horatio Humphrey. Mrs. Brown. Thank you, Mr. President, so very, very much, not only for presenting the medal but that most beautiful message and summation of Hubert's goals and life. When we -- children and wife and friends -- planned Hubert's funeral, it was not a funeral ceremony that we planned. It was a celebration of his life. And I find that today, with this great tribute, this is a continuation of that celebration of that man's life. He was one man who made a great change in the life of our country. Thank you again, so very much. Now I'm to introduce the continuation of the Humphrey family in my son, Hubert Humphrey, Jr. ``Skip'' Humphrey. Mr. Humphrey. Mr. President, ladies and gentlemen, honored guests: On behalf of my mother, my sister, and my brothers, and all of the members of our family, we gratefully accept the medal honoring Hubert Humphrey. I know if he were here today, he would suggest that all this fuss over his public life is just too much and not necessary. But privately, he would have thoroughly enjoyed the limelight and attention being given to him today. [Laughter] I remember well the notes and letters I received from Dad telling me of the visits with the President and with other dignitaries. He wanted to share with his family the infatuation, the love he had for his country, its political institutions and its people. We accept this medal for the people that Hubert Humphrey represented -- the people who live in Minnesota, the people from all walks of life, in all circumstances of need. And we accept this medal as a challenge to keep Hubert Humphrey's faith with the people and the land of America. Thank you for honoring the courage, hard work, faith, and integrity of a man we deeply love. As always, I would say it's the words of Hubert Humphrey that best express how he felt about life and politics in America. So, let me just close with a quote. He said: ``I have enjoyed my life, its disappointments outweighed by its pleasures. I have loved my country in a way that some people consider sentimental and out of style. I still do. And I remain an optimist with joy, without apology about this country and about the American experiment in democracy.'' Note: The President spoke at 10:46 a.m. in the Rose Garden at the White House.
The Life of Hubert H. Humphrey 1911 Hubert H. Humphrey, Jr., born in Wallace, South Dakota 1917 U.S. enters WWI
Humphrey family moves to Doland, S.D., to open a drugstore 1920 19th Amendment grants women the right to vote
First national radio broadcast takes place 1929
Stock Market crashes; Great Depression begins
Herbert Hoover becomes 31st president
Humphrey begins his studies at the University of Minnesota 1932
Humphrey leaves the U of M to help in the familys drugstore 1933
Franklin D. Roosevelt becomes 32nd president 1937
Events in Europe lead to WWII
Humphrey returns to the University of Minnesota 1939
Humphrey graduates from the U of M and starts graduate school at Louisiana State University 1940
First U.S. peacetime draft starts
Humphrey earns his masters degree in political science from LSU 1941
Japan attacks Pearl Harbor; U.S. declares war 1943
Humphrey runs for mayor of Minneapolis and loses
Starts teaching at Macalester College 1945
Harry Truman becomes president after death of FDR
U.S. drops atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan; WWII ends
Humphrey elected mayor of Minneapolis in landslide victory 1947
Humphrey re-elected mayor 1948
Humphrey gives civil rights speech at Democratic National Convention
Humphrey elected senator 1949
Humphrey sponsors his first bill, which becomes law in 1965 as Medicare 1951
22nd Amendment is passed, limiting president to two consecutive terms 1953
Dwight D. Eisenhower becomes 34th president 1954
U.S. Supreme Court rules against segregation in public schools
Humphrey wins re-election to the senate
Humphreys Food-for-Peace program begins 1955
Rosa Parkss actions start the bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama 1957
Soviet Union launches Sputnik, the first space satellite 1958
Humphrey proposes a treaty to ban nuclear weapons tests 1960
Humphrey is re-elected senator
Humphrey loses the Democratic nomination for president to John F. Kennedy 1961
JFK becomes 35th president
Berlin Wall is built
Peace Corps, sponsored by Humphrey, begins 1962
U.S. astronaut John Glenn becomes first man to orbit earth 1963
Martin Luther King, Jr., leads March on Washington
JFK is assassinated; Lyndon B. Johnson is sworn in as president
Senate approves Humphreys nuclear test ban treaty 1964
Important laws passed: Civil Rights Act; Job Corps Act; Food Stamp Act; Wilderness Preservation Act
LBJ is elected president with Humphrey as vice president 1967
Vietnam War protests take place across the U.S.
Thurgood Marshall becomes first black Supreme Court Justice 1968
Martin Luther King, Jr., is assassinated
Humphrey is nominated as Democratic candidate for president
Nixon beats Humphrey in one of the closest elections in history 1969
U.S. astronauts land on the moon 1970
Humphrey is re-elected to senate 1971
26th Amendment lowers the voting age to 18 1973
U.S. withdraws from Vietnam
Humphrey is diagnosed with cancer and begins treatment 1974
President Nixon resigns; Gerald Ford becomes 38th president 1976
Jimmy Carter elected 39th president
Humphrey re-elected senator for a 5th term
Humphrey undergoes surgery for cancer 1978
Humphrey dies at his home in Waverly, Minnesota
Humphrey grew up in Doland, South Dakota.
Humphrey played on the Doland High School football team. (second row, far left)
Humphrey in his Minneapolis mayor's office, 1947.
Senator Humphrey with John F. Kennedy during the Wisconsin primary election, 1960.
Vice President Humphrey and civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., 1965.
Vice President Hubert Humphrey and President Lyndon B. Johnson at the White House, 1965.
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