|
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
|
Presidential Medal of Freedom Recipient Arthur Flemming
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
| |
| |
Presidential Medal of Freedom Recipient Arthur Flemming
ARTHUR FLEMING
Awarded by
Bill Clinton
August 8, 1994
The highest attributes of Government service are clearly evident in the brilliant career of Arthur Flemming. Serving every President from Franklin Roosevelt to Ronald Reagan, he is a proven resource of astute intelligence and steadfast loyalty. On the first two Hoover Commissions, he strove to renew and reinvigorate established principles of governmental power and responsibility. From his role as Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare, to his landmark efforts as Chairman of the Commission on Civil Rights, he consistently challenged the status quo. He not only sought health care reform, but he also summoned our Nation to uphold its promise of equality. Arthur Flemming has selflessly labored for decades to make American Government more effective and efficient. A grateful Nation thanks him.
Arthur S. Flemming, who died in 1996 at the age of 91, was a lifelong Republican. Nevertheless, the first U.S. president to hire him, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, was a Democrat, and the first to fire him, Ronald Reagan, was a Republican. Savvy political watchers could rarely guess where Flemming's influential opinion would land, except that he always stood up for fairness, to workers, to women, to all races, to the elderly. Even his critics respected him; less than four years after initiating a short-lived ban on Oregon cranberries with a pesticide warning that infuriated the state's farmers as Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare, he was chosen to serve as the president of the University of Oregon.
Other than government, higher education was his greatest interest. His long career began as an instructor at Ohio Wesleyan, his alma mater, followed by a stint as a reporter at the magazine that became U.S. News and World Report, and then a law degree. He was only 34 when President Roosevelt tapped him as the Republican member on the old Civil Service Commission. His high standing there led to the establishment of the Arthur Flemming award, a high honor for federal employees that is still given out every year.
Flemming also served on the Hoover Commission on reorganizing the federal bureaucracy.
"Mr. Flemming is an evangelist in the cause of good government and regards the development of qualified people to administer burgeoning public programs as a critical national problem," the New York Times wrote of him in a profile in 1966. His soft-spoken, but out-spoken demeanor helped him examine America's social ills in an unflinching and caring way.
In 1948, he returned to academia as president of Ohio Wesleyan; he later served as head of Macalester College, as well as the University of Oregon.
In times of crisis, Flemming repeatedly returned to service to the government. He was the director of the Office of Defense Mobilization during the Korean War, then a leader in the Labor Department, the Atomic Energy Commission, and the Peace Corps. While in charge of Health, Education and Welfare during the Eisenhower administration, he created what became the federal Office on Aging. In his last years, his most outspoken role would be serving as President Clinton's adviser on the elderly.
"Older persons need a dream, not just a memory," he said.
He was a member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights from 1974 to 1981. He was fired by President Reagan after criticism of what he believed were attempts by that administration to roll back some of the civil rights victories.
"All of us, including minorities and women, have something to fear if people succeed in either eliminating or weakening methods we need to use in order to take the Constitution of the United States and make it a living document," Flemming said.
President Clinton honored Flemming with his second Presidential Medal of Freedom as a man who "transcended party, generation and race seeking consensus on some of the great issues of our day."
A lifelong Methodist, he also served for three years as the president of the United Council of Churches.
Arthur Fleming receives a Presidential Medal of Freedom presented by Bill Clinton August 8, 1994
|
|
|
|
|
|
Medal History
