Words spoken by a former American President 50 years ago have a special poignancy in this time of battles over spending and the nation’s crushing deficit. At his Inaugural in January 1961, John Kennedy said:
“And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you–
Ask what you can do for your country.”
Serving and giving always reap more satisfaction than grasping at what we can get, and how we can be served. A Quaker woman who lived in Colorado in the late 1800s lived to make life better for others. She was a dressmaker who never made a lot of money, but she felt compelled to use her life savings to provide a scholarship for a Southern black girl to get more than the most basic education; even getting that much learning at that time was terribly hard for the children of former slaves. Because of that woman’s generosity, Mary McLeod was able to attend Scotia Seminary, a secondary school in Concord, North Carolina. Years later, Mary McLeod Bethune, who went on to become a nationally respected educator and advisor to President Franklin Roosevelt, remembered the day she was told of the scholarship that made her success possible:
“Oh, the joy of that glorious morning! I can never forget it. To this day my heart thrills with gratitude at the memory of that day. I was but a little girl, groping for the light, dreaming dreams and seeing visions in the cotton and rice fields, and away off in Denver, Colorado, a poor dressmaker, sewing for her daily bread, heard my call and came to my assistance. Out of her scanty earnings she invested in a life—my life!—And while God gives me strength, I shall strive to pass on to others the opportunities that this noble woman toiled and sacrificed to give me. How many self-denials she must have made! How many little legitimate pleasures she must have foregone, that the little black girl in South Carolina might have a chance.” (Janney, Great Women in American History, pp. 41-42)
Tags: Franklin Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy Inaugural Speech, Mary McLeod Bethune
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