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Originally Processed With FOIA(s):
FOIA Number:
S
FOIA
MARKER
This is not a textual record. This is used as an
administrative marker by the George Bush Presidential
Library Staff.
Record Group/Collection:
George H.W. Bush Presidential Records
Collection/Office of Origin:
Speechwriting, White House Office of
Series:
Speech File Draft Files
Subseries:
Chron File, 1989-1993
OA/ID Number:
13510
Folder ID Number:
13510-011
Folder Title:
Lech Walesa 11/13/89 [OA 3537]
Stack:
Row:
Section:
Shelf:
Position:
G
25
6
6
2
Withdrawal/Redaction Sheet
(George Bush Library)
Document No.
Subject/Title of Document
Date
Restriction
Class.
and Type
01. Telegram
U.S. Embassy, Warsaw to Secretary of State, re: Lech
11/13/89
P-1, (b)(1)
C
Walesa. (3 pp.)
Collection:
Record Group:
Bush Presidential Records
Office:
Speechwriting, White House Office of
Series:
Speech File, Drafts
Subseries:
WHORM Cat.:
File Location:
Lech Walesa 11/13/89
Date Closed:
9/29/2004
OA/ID Number:
03537
FOIA/SYS Case #:
Re-review Case #:
2004-2249-S
P-2/P-5 Review Case #:
MR Case #:
Appeal Case #:
MR Disposition:
Appeal Disposition:
Disposition Date:
Disposition Date:
RESTRICTION CODES
Presidential Records Act - [44 U.S.C. 2204(a)]
Freedom of Information Act - [5 U.S.C. 552(b)]
P-1 National Security Classified Information [(a)(1) of the PRA]
(b)(1) National security classified information [(b)(1) of the FOIA]
P-2 Relating to the appointment to Federal office [(a)(2) of the PRA]
(b)(2) Release would disclose internal personnel rules and practices of an
P-3 Release would violate a Federal statute [(a)(3) of the PRA]
agency [(b)(2) of the FOIA]
P-4 Release would disclose trade secrets or confidential commercial or
(b)(3) Release would violate a Federal statute [(b)(3) of the FOIA]
financial information [(a)(4) of the PRA]
(b)(4) Release would disclose trade secrets or confidential or financial
P-5 Release would disclose confidential advise between the President
information [(b)(4) of the FOIA]
and his advisors, or between such advisors [a)(5) of the PRA]
(b)(6) Release would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of
P-6 Release would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of
personal privacy [(b)(6) of the FOIA]
personal privacy [(a)(6) of the PRA]
(b)(7) Release would disclose information compiled for law enforcement
purposes [(b)(7) of the FOIA]
C. Closed in accordance with restrictions contained in donor's deed of
(b)(8) Release would disclose information concerning the regulation of
gift.
financial institutions [(b)(8) of the FOIA]
(b)(9) Release would disclose geological or geophysical information
THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary
For Immediate Release
November 13, 1989
REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT
AND LECH WALESA
AT MEDAL OF FREEDOM CEREMONY
The East Room
6:07 P.M. EST
THE PRESIDENT: Just before Christmas, 1981, a darkness
descended across Poland for the third time this century. What had
begun as a year of hope and freedom ended in violence and repression.
In snow-filled crossroads and town squares across Poland, iron tanks
rumbled to a stop.
Lech Walesa made the sign of the cross on the foreheads
of his sleeping children and was taken away into the night.
Solidarity, a movement embracing the Polish nation, was outlawed.
Communications with the outside world were cut. And Poland awoke to
snow and steel and silence, an entire nation imprisoned.
But you can't lock up a dream. One by one, candles lit
the windows of Poland's farmhouses and tenements, silent beacons of
liberty still burning in the hearts of a brave and ancient people.
And that Christmas Eve, not far from where we stand, a candle burned
all night in the White House, like others all across America, glowing
with solidarity with the Polish people.
When spring came, a time of renewal and rebirth, Lech
Walesa's fate was still unknown, And as colleges and universities
approached graduation, one by one, again and again, the same two
names were heard. Lech Walesa and Solidarity.
Of course, Lech Walesa could not come to accept those
honorary degrees. And so in crowded assembly halls and packed arenas
across America, where every precious space was filled with proud and
loving families, stage after stage held a single, unfilled place --
an empty chair, bearing only the Solidarity banner -- awaiting the
release of Lech Walesa, the liberation of the Polish people.
We saw empty chairs in Maine and Pennsylvania, Rhode
Island and Illinois. And at Notre Dame, the crowd stood for three
minutes in cheering tribute to the empty chair and the man who wasn't
there. At Holy Cross, Lane Kirkland accepted the award on Lech
Walesa's behalf. And back in Poland, in a humble wooden church on
the outskirts of Gdansk, an empty chair was placed near the altar for
the baptism of tiny Maria-Victoria, Lech's seventh child, a little
girl he'd never seen.
For eight years, these empty chairs and the American
people have waited for you to come. We waited because we believe in
freedom. We waited because we believe in Poland. And we waited
because we believe in you. (Applause.)
And today, the waiting is over. Lech Walesa, man of
freedom, is at the White House. We think of it as the house of
freedom.
Lech Walesa, on behalf of the people of the United
States, I am proud to say to you: "Take your place in this house of
freedom. Take your place in the empty chair. Now you can have a
seat." (Applause.)
MORE
- 2 -
In just a few days, you will be the second private
citizen from abroad -- second in our history to ever address a joint
meeting of Congress -- after the Marquis de Lafayette in 1824. And
like him, you helped win an historic struggle. And like him, you
represent not only a people but also an idea -- an idea whose time
has come. And nothing can stop an idea whose time has come.
That idea is freedom. The time is now. (Applause.)
You were called a nobody. But Lenin and Stalin have been
disproved, not by presidents or princes, but by the likes of an
electrician from Gdansk and his fellow workers in a brave union
called Solidarity. The Iron Curtain is fast becoming a rusted,
abandoned relic, symbolizing a lost era, a failed ideology. And the
change is everywhere. Poland. Hungary. Czechoslovakia.
And ladies and gentlemen, the week that brought Lech
Walesa to America is the week that the headlines proclaimed, "And the
Wall comes tumbling down." (Applause.)
So what is happening in Berlin and on our television
screens is astounding. World War II, fought for freedom, ironically
left the world divided between the free and the unfree. And most of
us alive today were born into that sundered world. And now almost 50
years have passed and some have wondered all these years why we
stayed in Berlin. And let me tell you. We stayed because we knew --
we just knew -- all Americans -- that this day would come. And now a
century that was born in war and revolution may bequeath a legacy of
peace unthinkable only a few years ago.
The story of our times is the story of brave men and
women who seized a moment, who took a stand. Lech Walesa showed hpw
one individual could inspire others in them a faith SO powerful that
it vindicated itself; changed the course of a nation. History may
make men. But Lech Walesa has made history.
And I believe history continues to be made every day by
small daily acts of courage, by people who strive to make a
difference. Such people, says Lech, "are everywhere, in every
factory, steel mill, mine and shipyard, everywhere." And we've
certainly seen them in the American labor movement, where from the
leadership of Lane Kirkland to the rank and file across the country,
they have struggled in the vanguard of the free labor movement around
the world.
Our own humble electrician, Ben Franklin, declared that
"Our cause is the cause of all mankind, for we are fighting for their
liberty in defending our own." And like Franklin, who seized
lightning from the skies and brought it to Earth, Lech Walesa seized
an idea, a powerful idea, and with it electrified the world. The
idea is freedom. And the time is now.
Country by country, people by people, year by year,
courageous new voices are raised in a hundred languages. Spanish,
German, Chinese, Russian. And yet from these varied lips comes a
word all can understand. Freedom. And with one voice, the people of
the world have spoken. Freedom.
In America, it's our greatest natural resource, the
secret of our success. And freedom will bring success to Poland,
too. American aid has begun and more is coming. From Washington to
Warsaw, Kansas city to Krakow, from Green Bay to Gdansk, Americans
are linked in spirit with the Polish people in their brave struggle
for opportunity, prosperity and freedom.
Lech Walesa, by your abiding faith and by the miracle of
democracy's new birth in your homeland, you have come to personify
the new breeze that is sweeping the world, East and West, the
spiritual godfather of a new generation of democracy.
And even while Solidarity was banned, your example, and
the example of the Polish people was mirrored across Asia when
MORE
- 3 -
"People Power" became a chant, first in the Philippines, and then in
Pakistan and South Korea and, yes, even in Tiananmen Square. The
whole world is watching. And the whole world is with you.
(Applause.)
Thank you, Poland, for showing us that the dream is
alive. And thank you, Poland, for showing us that a dream wrought by
flesh and blood cannot be stilled by walls of steel. Thank you,
Poland. And thank you, Lech Walesa. (Applause.)
And now, it is with great pride that I bestow the medal,
previously awarded to the likes of Martin Luther King and President
John F. Kennedy, Anwar Sadat, Mother Teresa. It is our nation's
highest civilian honor. So, Mr. Walesa, if you'll come over here,
let me read the citation.
To Lech Walesa, of Gdansk, Poland, the Presidential Medal
of Freedom. Lech Walesa has shown through his life and work the
power of one individual's ideals when combined with the irresistible
force of freedom. Through moral authority, force of personality and
demonstrated heroism, he has inspired a nation and the world in the
cause of liberty. The United States honors a true man of his times
and of timeless ideals. Lech Walesa, distinguished son of Poland,
champion of universal human rights. (Applause.)
MR. WALESA: Mr. President, ladies and gentlemen, I'm
deeply moved and gratified that I'm here, in the Capital of the
United States of America and the White House, greeted so warmly by
President George Bush in the company of American Polish friends.
One of the greatest dreams of my life has thus been
fulfilled. I'm full of admiration for your country, not because it's
a big power and not because it's rich, even though one could envy
that. I admire America as a country of freedom -- freedom of man and
freedom of a nation. You took that freedom yourself. Nobody gave it
to you as a present. You built it through your hard work, step by
step. You created wonderful democratic institutions which are an
example for many other countries. But most before others, you
created human attachments to freedom.
America is a free country because American workers and
farmers are and want to be free. Technicians and engineers, bankers
and industrialists. America is rich with its freedom. It shares it
with the emigrants -- some are looking for freedom from misery and
others are looking for freedom from persecutions.
That is why I so highly cherish the Presidential Medal of
Freedom. Poles know the price of freedom as very few nations of the
world. They know how to fight for freedom. They know how to defend
freedom. Now my country has entered the road of freedom. It's
rebuilding its independence and democracy. It's restoring sense to
labor and economy. I'm sure that we will not get away from that
road.
Mr. President, for yours and our freedom, for the
American nation, for the freedom of all nations of the world, thank
you very much for this wonderful, wonderful distinction. (Applause.)
THE PRESIDENT: Please be seated. Before we conclude,
there is one more person with us today whose dedication to Solidarity
and to free trade unions I feel we must recognize. You all know how
crucial has been the work of the AFL-CIO in helping Solidarnosc
through difficult times and in promoting free trade unions and
democracy around the world.
So, Lane Kirkland, would you please come up here, sir.
(Applause.) For over a decade, under your leadership, you and the
union have been path-breakers for freedom, continuing the support for
free trade unions around the world. And in Eastern Europe, your
support was crucial. And you were there -- you, personally, were
there -- in the hour of greatest need, helping to keep alive the
dream of democracy in Poland.
MORE
- 4 -
And so, Lane, on behalf of a grateful nation, I want to
present you with the Presidential Citizens Medal. And the citation
reads: As President of the AFL-CIO, Joseph Lane Kirkland has worked
tirelessly and effectively in support of Solidarity, free trade
unions and democratic principles. America honors him for this
dedication, which has helped spread the lamp of liberty in Eastern
Europe and across the globe.
Congratulations. (Applause.)
MR. KIRKLAND: Mr. President, you must like surprises
because I was extraordinarily surprised by your very generous act in
enabling me to share an honor with the man who towers in the world
today for his achievements -- Lech Walesa.
I can only say that it's what I think I try my best to
stand for today that merits any such recognition. And what I do
stand for -- the instrument and the principle of free trade unionism
-- is today a lever that can move the world. And to serve that is a
privilege for any person.
Thank you again, Mr. President. (Applause.)
END
6:28 P.M. EST
THE WHITE HOUSE
WASHINGTON
November 8, 1989
INFORMATION
MEMORANDUM FOR THE PRESIDENT
FROM:
DAVID DEMAREST
CHRISS WINSTON
EDWARD MCNALLY
EMW
SUBJECT:
LECH WALESA MEDAL OF FREEDOM CEREMONY
I.
SUMMARY
Attached is a draft for Monday evening's presentation
of the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Lech Walesa. Interest
surrounding the award, and Walesa's first visit to America, is
sufficiently high that the networks may pre-empt local evening
news to carry your presentation live from the White House.
II. DISCUSSION
At approximately 6:00 p.m. on Monday, November 13,
1989, you are scheduled to join Mrs. Bush, Vice President and
Mrs. Quayle, and Secretary of Labor Elizabeth Dole outside the
Diplomatic Reception Room, to greet Lech Walesa and his official
host during this visit, Lane Kirkland.
At 6:05 p.m., Mr. Walesa is scheduled to accompany you
into the East Room, where your arrival will be announced to the
audience of approximately 220 persons, including U.S. labor
leaders and representatives of the Polish-American community.
The East Room stage will be empty except for your
podium, and a single, empty chair, draped with a red and white
"SOLIDARNOSC" banner. Ever since the events of December 1981,
the "empty chair" has been used at college commencements and in
churches across our country to symbolize the special place in
America that has been kept waiting for Lech Walesa.
For the first several minutes of your remarks, Mr.
Walesa will remain standing beside you at the podium. As is
indicated at the bottom of page two in the attached draft, at
that point you will turn to Lech Walesa, and gesture for him to
take his place in the empty chair with the "SOLIDARNOSC" banner.
At the conclusion of your remarks, you will invite
Walesa back to the podium to receive the Medal of Freedom.
McNally/Simon
November 9, 1989
Draft Five (B:LECH)
PRESIDENTIAL REMARKS: LECH WALESA MEDAL OF FREEDOM
THE EAST ROOM, THE WHITE HOUSE
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 1989
Just before Christmas, 1981, a darkness descended across
Poland for the third time this century. What had begun as a year
of hope and freedom ended in violence and repression.
In snow-filled crossroads and town squares across the
nation, iron tanks rumbled to a stop. Lech Walesa made a cross
on the foreheads of his sleeping children, and was taken away
into the night. Solidarity, a movement embracing the Polish
nation, was outlawed. Communications with the outside world were
cut off. And Poland awoke to snow and steel and silence, an
entire nation imprisoned.
But you can't lock up a dream. That night, candles lit the
windows of Poland's farmhouses and tenements, silent beacons of
the liberty still burning in the hearts of a brave and ancient
people. And that Christmas Eve, not far from where we stand, a
candle burned all night in the White House, like others all
across America, glowing in solidarity with the Polish people. \\
When spring came, a time of renewal and rebirth, Lech
Walesa's fate was still unknown. And as colleges and
universities approached graduation, one by one, again and again,
the same two names were heard. Lech Walesa. Solidarity.
of course, Lech Walesa could not come to accept those
honorary degrees. And so in crowded assembly halls and packed
2
arenas across America, where every precious space was filled with
proud and loving families, stage after stage held a single,
unfilled place -- an empty chair, bearing only the Solidarity
banner -- awaiting the release of Lech Walesa, and the liberation
of the Polish people.
We saw empty chairs in Maine and Illinois, Pennsylvania and
California. At Notre Dame, the crowd stood for three minutes in
cheering tribute to the empty chair and the man who wasn't there.
At Holy Cross, Lane Kirkland accepted the award on Lech Walesa's
behalf. And back in Poland, in a humble wooden church on the
outskirts of Gdansk, an empty chair was placed near the altar for
the baptism of tiny Maria-Victoria, Lech's seventh child, a
little girl he had never seen.
For eight years, these empty chairs, and the American
people, have waited for you to come. We have waited because we
believe in freedom. We have waited because we believe in Poland.
We have waited because we believe in you.
Today, the waiting is over. Today, Lech Walesa -- man of
freedom, is at the White House -- the house of freedom.
[ [TURN TO WALESA] Lech Walesa, on behalf of the people of
the United States, I am proud to say to you today: "Take your
place in this house of freedom. Take your place in the empty
chair." [ [GESTURE TO CHAIR WITH SOLIDARITY BANNER]
In just a few days, you will be the third private citizen in
our history to address a joint session of Congress -- after the
Marquis de Lafayette and Winston Churchill.
3
Like them, you helped win an important struggle against
tyrannical adversaries. And like them, you represent not only a
people but also an idea -- an idea whose time has come. And
nothing can stop an idea whose time has come.
The idea is freedom. And the time is now. III
You were called a "nobody." But Lenin and Stalin have been
disproven, not by Presidents or Princes, but by the likes of an
electrician frcm Gdansk and his fellow workers in a brave union
called Solidarity. The iron curtain is fast becoming a rusted,
abandoned relic, symbolizing a lost era and a failed ideology.
Poland. Hungary. East Germany. Czechoslovakia. The change is
everywhere. And now a century that was born in war and
revolution may bequeath a legacy of peace unthinkable only a few
years ago.
The story of our times is the story of brave men and women
who seized a moment, who took a stand. Lech Walesa showed how
one individual could inspire in others a faith so powerful that
it vindicated itself, and changed the course of a nation.
History may make men. But Lech Walesa has made history.
And I believe history continues to be made, every day, by
small, daily acts of courage, by people who strive to make a
difference. Such people, says Lech, "are everywhere, in every
factory, steel mill, mine and shipyard, everywhere." And we've
certainly seen them in the American labor movement, where from
the leadership of Lane Kirkland to the rank and file across the
4
nation, they have struggled in the vanguard of the free labor
movement around the world.
Our own humble electrician, Ben Franklin, declared that "Our
cause is the cause of all mankind, for we are fighting for their
liberty in defending our own." And like Franklin -- who seized
lightning from the skies and brought it to earth -- Lech Walesa
seized an idea -- a powerful idea -- and with it electrified the
world. The idea is freedom. And the time is now.
Country by country, people by people, year by year,
courageous new voices are raised in a hundred languages. In
Spanish. German. Chinese. Russian. Afghan. And yet -- like
the miracle of tongues -- from these varied lips comes a word all
can understand. FREEDOM. As if with one voice the people of the
world have spoken. FREEDOM.
In America, it is our greatest natural resource, the secret
of our success. And freedom will bring success to Poland, too.
American aid has begun and more is coming. From Washington to
Warsaw, from Kansas to Krakow, from Green Bay to Gdansk,
Americans are linked in spirit with the Polish people in their
brave struggle for opportunity, prosperity and freedom.
Ten days from now, mothers and fathers across America will
rise at first light to set log fires crackling and turkeys in the
oven, and so begin a day of thanksgiving and remembrance. By
candlelight and firelight, from the village greens of New
England, to the make-shift living rooms in re-born San Francisco,
Americans will gather to bow their heads in prayer.
5
Thanksgiving is the oldest, the most American of holidays,
dating back to our very origins as a people. It comes without
fireworks or presents. It comes without colored lights or
colored eggs, without costumes or masks or midnight horns.
It is a time of gratitude. A time to give thanks. A time
to remember what we stand for -- and why our forbearers
sacrificed so much to come here and to build this great land.
America. The very word excited visions in Europe from the
earliest days of the explorers. America is a refuge for hope, a
place where ideas and dreams and people are protected, like a
candle from the wind, to keep hope alive until the darkness lifts
and the sun shines on a people free and secure.
Today, Lech Walesa, you take your rightful seat in this
bastion of democracy, here in this house of freedom. But there
are others still waiting around the world. And our work remains
undone, so long as a single chair remains unfilled. So long as
the promise of freedom remains unkept.
Lech Walesa, by your abiding faith, and by the miracle of
democracy's new birth in your homeland, you have come to
personify the new breeze that is sweeping the world East and
West, the spiritual godfather of a new generation of democracy.
Even while Solidarity was banned, your example, and the
example of the Polish people, was mirrored across Asia when
"People Power" became a chant, first in the Philippines, and then
in Pakistan, and South Korea, and yes, even in Tianamen Square.
6
The whole world is watching. And the whole world is with
you.
Thank you, Poland -- for showing us that the dream is alive.
Thank you, Poland, for showing us that a dream wrought by flesh
and blood cannot be stilled by walls of steel. Thank you,
Poland. And thank you, Lech Walesa.
And now, it is with great pride and humility that I bestow
upon Lech Walesa, of Gdansk, Poland, our nation's highest
civilian honor -- a medal previously awarded to the likes of
Martin Luther King, George Meany, Anwar Sadat and Mother Teresa.
The Presidential Medal of Freedom.
#
#
#
Document No. 08858255
WHITE HOUSE STAFFING MEMORANDUM
11/11/89
DATE:
ACTION/CONCURRENCE/COMMENT DUE BY:
PRESIDENTIAL REMARKS: LECH WALESA MEDAL OF FREEDOM CEREMONY
THE EAST ROOM
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 1989 (11/9-draft five)
SUBJECT:
ACTION FYI
ACTION FYI
VICE PRESIDENT
MCCLURE
SUNUNU
NEWMAN
SCOWCROFT
PORTER
DARMAN
ROGICH
BATES
UNTERMEYER
ROGERS
CARD
PINKERTON
CICCONI
DEMAREST
WINSTON
FITZWATER
GRAY
HAGIN
REMARKS:
The attached has been forwarded to the President.
RESPONSE:
James W. Cicconi
Assistant to the President
and Deputy to the Chief of Staff
Ext. 2702
THE WHITE HOUSE
WASHINGTON
1989
NOV
`9
Fil
November 8, 1989
35
INFORMATION
MEMORANDUM FOR THE PRESIDENT
FROM:
DAVID DEMAREST
CHRISS WINSTON
EDWARD McNALLY
Ellin
SUBJECT:
LECH WALESA MEDAL OF FREEDOM CEREMONY
I.
SUMMARY
Attached is a draft for Monday evening's presentation
of the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Lech Walesa. Interest
surrounding the award, and Walesa's first visit to America, is
sufficiently high that the networks may pre-empt local evening
news to carry your presentation live from the White House.
II. DISCUSSION
At approximately 6:00 p.m. on Monday, November 13,
1989, you are scheduled to join Mrs. Bush, Vice President and
Mrs. Quayle, and Secretary of Labor Elizabeth Dole outside the
Diplomatic Reception Room, to greet Lech Walesa and his official
host during this visit, Lane Kirkland.
At 6:05 p.m., Mr. Walesa is scheduled to accompany you
into the East Room, where your arrival will be announced to the
audience of approximately 220 persons, including U.S. labor
leaders and representatives of the Polish-American community.
The East Room stage will be empty except for your
podium, and a single, empty chair, draped with a red and white
"SOLIDARNOSC" banner. Ever since the events of December 1981,
the "empty chair" has been used at college commencements and in
churches across our country to symbolize the special place in
America that has been kept waiting for Lech Walesa.
For the first several minutes of your remarks, Mr.
Walesa will remain standing beside you at the podium. As is
indicated at the bottom of page two in the attached draft, at
that point you will turn to Lech Walesa, and gesture for him to
take his place in the empty chair with the "SOLIDARNOSC" banner.
At the conclusion of your remarks, you will invite
Walesa back to the podium to receive the Medal of Freedom.
McNally/Simon
November 9, 1989
Draft Five (B:LECH)
PRESIDENTIAL REMARKS: LECH WALESA MEDAL OF FREEDOM
THE EAST ROOM, THE WHITE HOUSE
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 1989
Just before Christmas, 1981, a darkness descended across
Poland for the third time this century. What had begun as a year
of hope and freedom ended in violence and repression.
In snow-filled crossroads and town squares across the
nation, iron tanks rumbled to a stop. Lech Walesa made a cross
on the foreheads of his sleeping children, and was taken away
into the night. Solidarity, a movement embracing the Polish
nation, was outlawed. Communications with the outside world were
cut off. And Poland awoke to snow and steel and silence, an
entire nation imprisoned. III
But you can't lock up a dream. That night, candles lit the
windows of Poland's farmhouses and tenements, silent beacons of
the liberty still burning in the hearts of a brave and ancient
people. And that Christmas Eve, not far from where we stand, a
candle burned all night in the White House, like others all
across America, glowing in solidarity with the Polish people.
When spring came, a time of renewal and rebirth, Lech
Walesa's fate was still unknown. And as colleges and
universities approached graduation, one by one, again and again,
the same two names were heard. Lech Walesa. \\ Solidarity.
of course, Lech Walesa could not come to accept those
honorary degrees. And so in crowded assembly halls and packed
2
arenas across America, where every precious space was filled with
proud and loving families, stage after stage held a single,
unfilled place -- an empty chair, bearing only the Solidarity
banner -- awaiting the release of Lech Walesa, and the liberation
of the Polish people.
We saw empty chairs in Maine and Illinois, Pennsylvania and
California. At Notre Dame, the crowd stood for three minutes in
cheering tribute to the empty chair and the man who wasn't there.
At Holy Cross, Lane Kirkland accepted the award on Lech Walesa's
behalf. And back in Poland, in a humble wooden church on the
outskirts of Gdansk, an empty chair was placed near the altar for
the baptism of tiny Maria-Victoria, Lech's seventh child, a
little girl he had never seen.
For eight years, these empty chairs, and the American
people, have waited for you to come. We have waited because we
believe in freedom. We have waited because we believe in Poland.
We have waited because we believe in you.
Today, the waiting is over. Today, Lech Walesa -- man of
freedom, is at the White House -- the house of freedom.
[[TURN TO WALESA]] Lech Walesa, on behalf of the people of
the United States, I am proud to say to you today: "Take your
place in this house of freedom. Take your place in the empty
chair.' [GESTURE TO CHAIR WITH SOLIDARITY BANNER]]
In just a few days, you will be the third private citizen in
our history to address a joint session of Congress -- after the
Marquis de Lafayette and Winston Churchill.
3
Like them, you helped win an important struggle against
tyrannical adversaries. And like them, you represent not only a
people but also an idea -- an idea whose time has come. And
nothing can stop an idea whose time has come.
The idea is freedom. And the time is now.
You were called a "nobody." But Lenin and Stalin have been
disproven, not by Presidents or Princes, but by the likes of an
electrician from Gdansk and his fellow workers in a brave union
called Solidarity. The iron curtain is fast becoming a rusted,
abandoned relic, symbolizing a lost era and a failed ideology.
Poland. Hungary. East Germany. Czechoslovakia. The change is
everywhere. And now a century that was born in war and
revolution may bequeath a legacy of peace unthinkable only a few
years ago.
The story of our times is the story of brave men and women
who seized a moment, who took a stand. Lech Walesa showed how
one individual could inspire in others a faith so powerful that
it vindicated itself, and changed the course of a nation.
History may make men. But Lech Walesa has made history.
And I believe history continues to be made, every day, by
small, daily acts of courage, by people who strive to make a
difference. Such people, says Lech, "are everywhere, in every
factory, steel mill, mine and shipyard, everywhere." And we've
certainly seen them in the American labor movement, where from
the leadership of Lane Kirkland to the rank and file across the
4
nation, they have struggled in the vanguard of the free labor
movement around the world.
Our own humble electrician, Ben Franklin, declared that "Our
cause is the cause of all mankind, for we are fighting for their
liberty in defending our own." And like Franklin -- who seized
lightning from the skies and brought it to earth -- Lech Walesa
seized an idea -- a powerful idea -- and with it electrified the
world. The idea is freedom. And the time is now.
Country by country, people by people, year by year,
courageous new voices are raised in a hundred languages. In
Spanish. German. Chinese. Russian. Afghan. And yet -- like
the miracle of tongues -- from these varied lips comes a word all
can understand. FREEDOM. As if with one voice the people of the
world have spoken. FREEDOM.
In America, it is our greatest natural resource, the secret
of our success. And freedom will bring success to Poland, too.
American aid has begun and more is coming. From Washington to
Warsaw, from Kansas to Krakow, from Green Bay to Gdansk,
Americans are linked in spirit with the Polish people in their
brave struggle for opportunity, prosperity and freedom.
Ten days from now, mothers and fathers across America will
rise at first light to set log fires crackling and turkeys in the
oven, and so begin a day of thanksgiving and remembrance. By
candlelight and firelight, from the village greens of New
England, to the make-shift living rooms in re-born San Francisco,
Americans will gather to bow their heads in prayer.
5
Thanksgiving is the oldest, the most American of holidays,
dating back to our very origins as a people. It comes without
fireworks or presents. It comes without colored lights or
colored eggs, without costumes or masks or midnight horns.
It is a time of gratitude. A time to give thanks. A time
to remember what we stand for -- and why our forbearers
sacrificed so much to come here and to build this great land.
America. The very word excited visions in Europe from the
earliest days of the explorers. America is a refuge for hope, a
place where ideas and dreams and people are protected, like a
candle from the wind, to keep hope alive until the darkness lifts
and the sun shines on a people free and secure.
Today, Lech Walesa, you take your rightful seat in this
bastion of democracy, here in this house of freedom. But there
are others still waiting around the world. And our work remains
undone, so long as a single chair remains unfilled. So long as
the promise of freedom remains unkept.
Lech Walesa, by your abiding faith, and by the miracle of
democracy's new birth in your homeland, you have come to
personify the new breeze that is sweeping the world East and
West, the spiritual godfather of a new generation of democracy.
Even while Solidarity was banned, your example, and the
example of the Polish people, was mirrored across Asia when
"People Power" became a chant, first in the Philippines, and then
in Pakistan, and South Korea, and yes, even in Tianamen Square.
6
The whole world is watching. And the whole world is with
you.
Thank you, Poland -- for showing us that the dream is alive.
Thank you, Poland, for showing us that a dream wrought by flesh
and blood cannot be stilled by walls of steel. Thank you,
Poland. And thank you, Lech Walesa.
And now, it is with great pride and humility that I bestow
upon Lech Walesa, of Gdansk, Poland, our nation's highest
civilian honor -- a medal previously awarded to the likes of
Martin Luther King, George Meany, Anwar Sadat and Mother Teresa.
The Presidential Medal of Freedom.
#
#
#
McNally/Simon
November 9, 1989
Draft Five (B:LECH)
PRESIDENTIAL REMARKS: LECH WALESA MEDAL OF FREEDOM
THE EAST ROOM, THE WHITE HOUSE
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 1989
Just before Christmas, 1981, a darkness descended across
Poland for the third time this century. What had begun as a year
of hope and freedom ended in violence and repression. //
In snow-filled crossroads and town squares across the
nation, iron tanks rumbled to a stop. Lech Walesa made a cross
on the foreheads of his sleeping children, and was taken away
into the night. Solidarity, a movement embracing more than half
the Polish nation, was outlawed. Communications with the outside
world were cut off. And Poland awoke to snow and steel and
silence, an entire nation imprisoned. ///
But you can't lock up a dream. That night, candles lit the
windows of Poland's farmhouses and tenements, silent beacons of
the liberty still burning in the hearts of a brave and ancient
people. And that Christmas Eve, not far from where we stand, a
candle burned all night in the White House, like others all
across America, glowing in solidarity with the Polish people. //
When spring came, a time of renewal and rebirth, Lech
Walesa's fate was still unknown. And as colleges and
universities approached graduation, one by one, again and again,
the same two names were heard. // Lech Walesa. // Solidarity.
Of course, Lech Walesa could not come to accept those
honorary degrees. And so in crowded assembly halls and packed
2
arenas across America, where every precious space was filled with
proud and loving families, stage after stage held a single,
unfilled place -- an empty chair, bearing only the Solidarity
banner -- awaiting the release of Lech Walesa, and the liberation
of the Polish people.
We saw empty chairs in Maine and Illinois, Pennsylvania and
California. At Notre Dame, the crowd stood for three minutes in
cheering tribute to the empty chair and the man who wasn't there.
At Holy Cross, Lane Kirkland accepted the award on Lech Walesa's
behalf. And back in Poland, in a humble wooden church on the
outskirts of Gdansk, an empty chair was placed near the altar for
the baptism of tiny Maria-Victoria, Lech's seventh child, a
little girl he had never seen. //
For eight years, these empty chairs, and the American
people, have waited for you to come. We have waited because we
believe in freedom. We have waited because we believe in Poland.
We have waited because we believe in you. ///
Today, the waiting is over. Today, Lech Walesa -- man of
freedom, is at the White House -- the house of freedom.
//
[ [TURN TO WALESA] ] Lech Walesa, on behalf of the people of
the United States, I am proud to say to you today: "Take your
place in this house of freedom. Take your place in the empty
chair." [GESTURE TO CHAIR WITH SOLIDARITY BANNER] ] ////
in our history
In just a few days, you will be the third private citizen --
after Winston Churchill and the Marquis de Lafayette -- to
address a joint session of Congress.
3
Like them, you helped win an important struggle against
tyrannical adversaries. And like them, you represent not only a
people but also an idea -- an idea whose time has come. And
nothing can stop an idea whose time has come. / /
The idea is freedom. // And the time is now. ///
You were called a "nobody." But Lenin and Stalin have been
disproven, not by Presidents or Princes, but by the likes of an
electrician from Gdansk and his fellow workers in a brave union
called Solidarity. The iron curtain is fast becoming a rusted,
abandoned relic, symbolizing a lost era and a failed ideology.
Poland. Hungary. East Germany. Czechoslovakia. The chance is
everywhere. And now a century that was born in war and
revolution may bequeath a legacy of peace unthinkable only a few
years ago. //
The story of our times is the story of brave men and women
who seized a moment, who took a stand. Lech Walesa showed how
one individual could inspire in others a faith so powerful that
it vindicated itself, and changed the course of a nation.
History may make men. But Lech Walesa has made history. //
And I believe history continues to be made, every day, by
small, daily acts of courage, by people who strive to make a
difference. Such people, says Lech, "are everywhere, in every
factory, steel mill, mine and shipyard, everywhere." And we've
certainly seen them in the American labor movement, where from
the leadership of Lane Kirkland to the rank and file across the
4
nation, they have struggled in the vanguard of the free labor
movement around the world.
Our own humble electrician, Ben Franklin, declared that "Our
cause is the cause of all mankind, for we are fighting for their
liberty in defending our own." And like Franklin -- who seized
lightning from the skies and brought it to earth -- Lech Walesa
seized an idea -- a powerful idea -- and with it electrified the
world. The idea is freedom. // And the time is now. //
Country by country, people by people, year by year,
courageous new voices are raised in a hundred languages. In
Spanish. German. Chinese. Russian. Afghan. And yet -- like
the miracle of tongues -- from these varied lips comes a word all
can understand. FREEDOM. As if with one voice the people of the
world have spoken. FREEDOM.
insert
In America, it is our greatest natural resource, the secret
of our
success. and freedom will bring sucass to Poland, too.
A
Ten days from now, mothers and fathers across America will
from
rise at first light to set log fires crackling and turkeys in the
p.s
oven, and so begin a day of thanksgiving and remembrance. By
candlelight and firelight, from the village greens of New
England, to the make-shift living rooms in re-born San Francisco,
Americans will gather to bow their heads in prayer.
Thanksgiving is the oldest, the most American of holidays,
dating back to our very origins as a people. It comes without
fireworks or presents. It comes without colored lights or
colored eggs, without costumes or masks or midnight horns.
5
*
It is a time of gratitude. A time to give thanks. A time
to remember what we stand for -- and why our forbearers
sacrificed so much to come here and to build this great land.
America. The very word excited visions in Europe from the
earliest days of the explorers. America is a refuge for hope, a
place where ideas and dreams and people are protected, like a
candle from the wind, to keep hope alive until the darkness lifts
and the sun shines on a people free and secure. //
Today, Lech Walesa, you take your rightful seat in this
bastion of democracy, here in this house of freedom. But there
are others still waiting around the world. And our work remains
undone, so long as a single chair remains unfilled. So long as
top.4
the promise of freedom remains unkept.
//
American aid has begun and more is coming. From Washington
to Warsaw, from Kansas to Krakow, from Green Bay to Gdansk,
Americans are linked in spirit with the Polish people in their
brave struggle for opportunity, prosperity and freedom. 1111
Lech Walesa, by your abiding faith, and by the miracle of
democracy's new birth in your homeland, you have come to
personify the new breeze that is sweeping the world East and
West, the spiritual godfather of a new generation of democracy.
Even while Solidarity was banned, your example, and the
example of the Polish people, was mirrored across Asia when
"People Power" became a chant, first in the Philippines, and then
in Pakistan, and South Korea, and yes, even in Tianamen Square.
6
The whole world is watching. And the whole world is with
you, and the union workers you represent.
Thank you, Poland -- for showing us that the dream is alive.
Thank you, Poland, for showing us that a dream wrought by flesh
and blood cannot be stilled by walls of steel. Thank you,
Poland. And thank you, Lech Walesa.
And now, it is with great pride and humility that I bestow
upon Lech Walesa, of Gdansk, Poland, our nation's highest
civilian honor -- a medal previously awarded to the likes of
Martin Luther King, George Meany, Anwar Sadat and Mother Teresa.
The Presidential Medal of Freedom.
#
#
#
CLOSE HOLD
SENSITIVE
Document No. 088582SS
WHITE HOUSE STAFFING MEMORANDUM
11/7/89
11/8/89 4:00 PM
DATE:
ACTION/CONCURRENCE/COMMENT DUE BY:
PRESIDENTIAL REMARKS: LECH WALESA
SUBJECT:
ACTION FYI
ACTION FYI
VICE PRESIDENT
MCCLURE
SUNUNU
NEWMAN
SCOWCROFT
PORTER
DARMAN
ROGICH
BATES
UNTERMEYER
CARD
ROGERS
WINSTON
CICCONI
DEMAREST
PINKERTON
FITZWATER
GRAY
HAGIN
REMARKS:
Please forward any comments directly to Chriss Winston, Rm. 122,
x2930, no llater than 4:00 PM, Wednesday, November 8, with a copy
to my office. Thank you.
RESPONSE:
CLOSE HOLD
SENSITIVE
James W. Cicconi
Assistant to the President
and Deputy to the Chief of Staff
Ext. 2702
McNally/Simon
Nowember 7, 1989
1989 NOV -7 PM Draft Three (B:LECH)
PRESIDENTIAL REMARKS: LECH WALESA MEDAL OF FREEDOM
THE EAST ROOM, THE WHITE HOUSE
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 1989
Just before Christmas, 1981, a darkness descended across
this
Poland for the second time this century. What had begun as a
year of hope and freedom ended in violence and repression.
In snow-filled crossroads and town-squares across the
nation, iron tanks rumbled to a stop. Lech Walesa made a cross
on the foreheads of his sleeping children, and was taken away
into the night. Solidarity, a movement embracing more than half
nation
the Polish people, was outlawed. Communications with the outside
off.
world were cut. And Poland awoke to snow and steel and silence,
an entire nation imprisoned.
?
But as man has learned from Budapest to Beijing, you can't
lock up a dream. That night, candles lit the windows of Poland's
farmhouses and tenements, silent beacons of the liberty still
burning in the hearts of a brave and ancient people. And that
Christmas Eve, not far from where we stand, a candle burned all
night in the White House, like others all across America, glowing
in solidarity with the Polish people.
When spring came, a time of renewal and rebirth, Lech
Walesa's fate was still unknown. And as colleges and
universities approached graduation, one by one, again and again,
the same two names were heard. Lech Walesa. Solidarity.
2
Of course, Lech Walesa could not come to accept those
honorary degrees. And so in crowded assembly halls and packed
arenas across America, where every precious space was filled with
proud and loving families, stage after stage held a single,
unfilled place -- an empty chair, bearing only the Solidarity
banner -- awaiting the release of Lech Walesa, and the liberation
of the Polish people.
We saw empty chairs in Maine and Illinois, Pennsylvania and
California. At Notre Dame, the crowd stood for three minutes in
cheering tribute to the empty chair and the man who wasn't there.
At Holy Cross, Lane Kirkland accepted the award on Lech Walesa's
behalf. And back in Poland, in a humble wooden church on the
outskirts of Gdansk, an empty chair was placed near the altar for
the baptism of tiny Maria-Victoria, Lech's seventh child, a
little girl he had never seen.
For eight years, these empty chairs, and the American
we
people, have waited for you to come. They have waited because we
we
believe in freedom. They have waited because we believe in
we
Poland. They have waited because we believe in you.
Today, the waiting is over. Today, Lech Walesa -- man of
freedom, is at the White House -- the house of freedom.
[[TURN TO WALESA]] Lech Walesa, on behalf of the people of
the Unites States, I am proud to say to you today: "Take your
place in this house of freedom. Take your place in the empty
chair." [GESTURE TO CHAIR WITH SOLIDARITY BANNER] ]
3
You represent a great people and a great nation. Even more,
you represent an idea -- an idea whose time has come. And
nothing can stop an idea whose time has come.
The idea is freedom. And the time is now.
you were
The dictators and the generals called you a "nobody." But
Lenin and Stalin have been disproved, not by Presidents or
and his
Princes, but by the likes of an electrician from Gdansk and a
fellow workers we a brave muon called Solidarity
housewife from Manila. The iron curtain is fast becoming a
rusted, abandoned relic, symbolizing a lost era and a failed
ideology.
And nowa century that was born in war and revolution may
Poland and
Poligory
a legacy of peace unthinkable only a few years ago.
is
That doesn't mean we embrace today's popular refrain that
says, "History is over." I don't believe history is over. For
the story of our times is the story of brave men and women who
seized a moment, who took a stand.
Lech Walesa showed how one individual could inspire in
others a faith so powerful that it vindicated itself, and changed
the course of a nation. History may make men. But Lech Walesa
has made history.
And I believe history continues to be made, every day, by
small, daily acts of courage, by people who strive to make a
difference. Such people, says Lech, "are everywhere, in every
factory, steel mill, mine and shipyard, everywhere." And we've
certainly seen them in the American labor movement, where from
the leadership of Lane Kirkland to the rank and file across the
4
nation, they have struggled in the vanguard of the free labor
movement around the world.
Our own humble electrician, Ben Franklin, who like Lech
Walesa seized lightning from the skies and brought it to earth,
declared that "Our cause is the cause of all mankind, for we are
fighting for their liberty in defending our own."
Country by country, people by people, year by year,
courageous new voices are raised in a hundred languages. In
Spanish. German. Chinese. Russian. Afghan. And yet -- like
the miracle of tongues -- from these varied lips comes a word all
can understand. FREEDOM. As if with one voice the people of the
world have cried spoken out. FREEDOM.
In America, it is our greatest natural resource, the secret
of our success.
Ten
across America
10 days from now, mothers and fathers will rise at first
light to set log fires crackling and turkeys in the oven, and so
begin a day of thanksgiving and remembrance. By candlelight and
firelight, from the village greens of New England to the
houseboats of the Gulf of Mexico, the farmhouses of Indiana, the
snowy cabins of the Dakotas, and the make-shift living rooms in
re-born San Francisco, Americans will gather to bow their heads
in prayerx
Thanksgiving is the oldest, the most American of holidays,
dating back to our very origins as a people. It comes without
fireworks or presents. It comes without colored lights or
colored eggs, without costumes or masks or midnight horns.
5
It is a time of gratitude. A time to give thanks. A time
to remember what we stand for -- and why our forbearers
sacrificed so much to come here and to build this great land.
America. The very word excited visions in Europe from the
earliest days of the explorers. America is a refuge for hope, a
place where ideas and dreams and people are protected, like a
candle from the wind, to keep hope alive until the darkness lifts
and the sun shines on a people free and secure.
Lech Walesa,
Today, you take your rightful seat in this bastion of
democracy, here in the house of freedom. But there are others
less fortunate, standing in the shoes of repression that you once
wore. And our work remains undone until every chair is filled.
Here in the White House, here in America, empty chairs
remain for people like Guillermo Endara, the democratically
elected President of Panama, his head bloodied but unbowed by
Noriega's lead-pipe politics. For Violeta Chamorro, the widowed
editor of Nicaragua's opposition newspaper. For Prince Sihanouk
of Cambodia. And yes, for Nelson Mandela, who we hope will soon
be freed.
Lech Walesa, by your abiding faith, and by the miracle of
democracy's new birth in your homeland, you have come to
personify the new breeze that is sweeping the world East and West,
the spiritual godfather of a new generation of democracy.
Your example, and the example of the Polish people, has
inspired hope and change in Hungary, East Germany, and all of
Europe. Even while Solidarity was banned, your example, and the
Stet
6
example of the Polish people, was mirrored across Asia when
"People Power" became a chant, first in the Philippines, and then
in Pakistan, and South Korea, and yes, even in Tianamen Square.
The whole world is watching. And the whole world is with
you.
Thank you, Poland -- for showing us that the dream is alive
even behind the Iron Curtain. Thank you, Poland, for showing us
that a dream wrought by flesh and blood cannot be stilled by
walls of steel. Thank you, Poland. And thank you, Lech Walesa.
And now, it is with great pride and humility that I bestow
upon Lech Walesa, of Gdansk, Poland, our nation's highest
civilian honor -- a medal previously awarded to the likes of
Martin Luther King, George Meany, Anwar Sadat and Mother Teresa.
The Presidential Medal of Freedom.
#
#
#
CLOSE HOLD
SENSITIVE
Document No. 088582SS
WHITE HOUSE STAFFING MEMORANDUM
11/7/89
11/8/89 4:00 PM
DATE:
ACTION/CONCURRENCE/COMMENT DUE BY:
PRESIDENTIAL REMARKS: LECH WALESA
SUBJECT:
ACTION FYI
ACTION FYI
VICE PRESIDENT
MCCLURE
SUNUNU
NEWMAN
SCOWCROFT
PORTER
DARMAN
ROGICH
BATES
UNTERMEYER
CARD
ROGERS
WINSTON
CICCONI
DEMAREST
PINKERTON
FITZWATER
GRAY
HAGIN
REMARKS:
Please forward any comments directly to Chriss Winston, Rm. 122,
x2930, nollater than 4:00 PM, Wednesday, November 8, with a copy
to my office. Thank you.
RESPONSE:
CLOSE HOLD
SENSITIVE
please see far comments
65 :5d 8 100.68
11/8/89
James W. Cicconi
Assistant to the President
and Deputy to the Chief of Staff
Ext. 2702
McNally/Simon
November 7, 1989
1989 NOV - 7 PM 5 Draft Three (B:LECH)
PRESIDENTIAL REMARKS: LECH WALESA MEDAL OF FREEDOM
THE EAST ROOM, THE WHITE HOUSE
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 1989
Just before Christmas, 1981, a darkness descended across
Poland for the second time this century. What had begun as a
year of hope and freedom ended in violence and repression.
In snow-filled crossroads and town-squares across the
nation, iron tanks rumbled to a stop. Lech Walesa made a cross
on the foreheads of his sleeping children, and was taken away
into the night. Solidarity, a movement embracing more than half
the Polish people, was outlawed. Communications with the outside
world were cut, off And Poland awoke to snow and steel and silence,
an entire nation imprisoned.
But as man has learned from Budapest to Beijing, you can't
lock up a dream. That night, candles lit the windows of Poland's
farmhouses and tenements, silent beacons of the liberty still
burning in the hearts of a brave and ancient people. And that
special was lit and
Christmas Eve, not far from where we stand, a,candle/burned all
night in the White House, like others all across America, glowing
in solidarity with the Polish people.
When spring came, a time of renewal and rebirth, Lech
Walesa's fate was still unknown. And as colleges and
universities approached graduation, one by one, again and again,
the same two names were heard. Lech Walesa. Solidarity.
2
of course, Lech Walesa could not come to accept those
honorary degrees. And so in crowded assembly halls and packed
arenas across America, where every precious space was filled with
proud and loving families, stage after stage held a single,
unfilled place -- an empty chair, bearing only the Solidarity
banner -- awaiting the release of Lech Walesa, and the liberation
of the Polish people.
We saw empty chairs in Maine and Illinois, Pennsylvania and
California. At Notre Dame, the crowd stood for three minutes in
cheering tribute to the empty chair and the man who wasn't there.
At Holy Cross, Lane Kirkland accepted the award on Lech Walesa's
behalf. And back in Poland, in a humble wooden church on the
outskirts of Gdansk, an empty chair was placed near the altar for
the baptism of tiny Maria-Victoria, Lech's seventh child, a
little girl he had never seen.
For eight years, these empty chairs, and the American
people, have waited for you to come. They have waited because we
believe in freedom. They have waited because we believe in
Poland. They have waited because we believe in you.
Today, the waiting is over. Today, Lech Walesa -- man of
freedom, is at the White House -- the house of freedom.
[ [TURN TO WALESA] Lech Walesa, on behalf of the people of
the Unites States, I am proud to say to you today: "Take your
place in this house of freedom. Take your place in the empty
chair." [ [GESTURE TO CHAIR WITH SOLIDARITY BANNER]
3
You represent a great people and a great nation. Even more,
you represent an idea -- an idea whose time has come. And
nothing can stop an idea whose time has come.
The idea is freedom. And the time is now.
The dictators and the generals called you a "nobody." But
Lenin and Stalin have been disproved, not by Presidents or
Princes, but by the likes of an electrician from Gdansk and a
housewife from Manila. The iron curtain is fast becoming a
rusted, abandoned relic, symbolizing a lost era and a failed
a
ideology. And century that was born in war and revolution may
bequeath a legacy of peace unthinkable only a few years ago.
That doesn't mean we embrace today's popular refrain that
says, "History is over. " I don't believe history is over. For
the story of our times is the story of brave men and women who
seized a moment, who took a stand.
Lech Walesa showed how one individual could inspire in
others a faith so powerful that it vindicated itself, and changed
the course of a nation. History may make men. But Lech Walesa
has made history.
And I believe history continues to be made, every day, by
small, daily acts of courage, by people who strive to make a
difference. Such people, says Lech, "are everywhere, in every
factory, steel mill, mine and shipyard, everywhere." And we've
certainly seen them in the American labor movement, where from
the leadership of Lane Kirkland to the rank and file across the
4
nation, they have struggled in the vanguard of the free labor
movement around the world.
Our own humble electrician, Ben Franklin, who like Lech
Walesa seized lightning from the skies and brought it to earth,
declared that "Our cause is the cause of all mankind, for we are
fighting for their liberty in defending our own."
Country by country, people by people, year by year,
courageous new voices are raised in a hundred languages. In
Spanish. German. Chinese. Russian. Afghan. And yet -- like
the miracle of tongues -- from these varied lips comes a word all
can understand. FREEDOM. As if with one voice the people of the
world have cried out. FREEDOM.
In America, it is our greatest natural resource, the secret
of our success.
10 days from now, mothers and fathers will rise at first
light to set log fires crackling and turkeys in the oven, and so
begin a day of thanksgiving and remembrance. By candlelight and
firelight, from the village greens of New England, to the
houseboats of the Gulf of Mexico, the farmhouses of Indiana, the
snowy cabins of the Dakotas, and the make-shift living rooms in
re-born San Francisco, Americans will gather to bow their heads
in prayer.
Thanksgiving is the oldest, the most American of holidays,
dating back to our very origins as a people. It comes without
fireworks or presents. It comes without colored lights or
colored eggs, without costumes or masks or midnight horns.
5
It is a time of gratitude. A time to give thanks. A time
to remember what we stand for -- and why our forbearers
sacrificed so much to come here and to build this great land.
America. The very word excited visions in Europe from the
earliest days of the explorers. America is a refuge for hope, a
place where ideas and dreams and people are protected, like a
candle from the wind, to keep hope alive until the darkness lifts
and the sun shines on a people free and secure.
Today, you take your rightful seat in this bastion of
democracy, here in the house of freedom. But there are others
less fortunate, standing in the shoes of repression that you once
wore. And our work remains undone until every chair is filled.
Here in the White House, here in America, empty chairs
remain for people like Guillermo Endara, the democratically
elected President of Panama, his head bloodied but unbowed by
Noriega's lead-pipe politics. For Violeta Chamorro, the widowed
editor of Nicaragua's opposition newspaper. For Prince Sihanouk
of Cambodia. And yes, for Nelson Mandela, who we hope will soon
be freed.
Lech Walesa, by your abiding faith, and by the miracle of
democracy's new birth in your homeland, you have come to
personify the new breeze that's sweeping the world East and West,
the spiritual godfather of a new generation of democracy.
Your example, and the example of the Polish people, has
inspired hope and change in Hungary, East Germany, and all of
Europe. Even while Solidarity was banned, your example, and the
6
example of the Polish people, was mirrored across Asia when
"People Power" became a chant, first in the Philippines, and then
in Pakistan, and South Korea, and yes, even in Tianamen Square.
The whole world is watching. And the whole world is with
you.
Thank you, Poland -- for showing us that the dream is alive
even behind the Iron Curtain. Thank you, Poland, for showing us
that a dream wrought by flesh and blood cannot be stilled by
walls of steel. Thank you, Poland. And thank you, Lech Walesa.
And now, it is with great pride and humility that I bestow
upon Lech Walesa, of Gdansk, Poland, our nation's highest
civilian honor -- a medal previously awarded to the likes of
Martin Luther King, George Meany, Anwar Sadat and Mother Teresa.
The Presidential Medal of Freedom.
#
#
#
CLOSE HOLD
SENSITIVE
Document No. 088582SS
WHITE HOUSE STAFFING MEMORANDUM
11/7/89
11/8/89 4:00 PM
DATE:
ACTION/CONCURRENCE/COMMENT DUE BY:
PRESIDENTIAL REMARKS: LECH WALESA
SUBJECT:
ACTION FYI
ACTION FYI
VICE PRESIDENT
MCCLURE
SUNUNU
NEWMAN
SCOWCROFT
PORTER
DARMAN
ROGICH
BATES
UNTERMEYER
CARD
ROGERS
WINSTON
CICCONI
DEMAREST
PINKERTON
FITZWATER
GRAY
HAGIN
REMARKS:
Please forward any comments directly to Chriss Winston, Rm. 122,
x2930, no later than 4:00 PM, Wednesday, November 8, with a copy
to my office. Thank you.
RESPONSE:
CLOSE HOLD
SENSITIVE
see Community
12 : Pd 8 100 68
James W. Cicconi
Assistant to the President
and Deputy to the Chief of Staff
Ext. 2702
McNally/Simon
Nowember 7, 1989
1989
NOV
-
7
PM
5
Draft Three (B:LECH)
PRESIDENTIAL REMARKS: LECH WALESA MEDAL OF FREEDOM
THE EAST ROOM, THE WHITE HOUSE
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 1989
Just before Christmas, 1981, a darkness descended across
Poland for the second time this century. What had begun as a
year of hope and freedom ended in violence and repression.
In snow-filled crossroads and town-squares across the
nation, iron tanks rumbled to a stop. Lech Walesa made a cross
on the foreheads of his sleeping children, and was taken away
into the night. Solidarity, a movement embracing more than half
the Polish people, was outlawed. Communications with the outside
world were cut. And Poland awoke to snow and steel and silence,
an entire nation imprisoned.
But as man has learned from Budapest to Beijing, you can't
lock up a dream. That night, candles lit the windows of Poland's
farmhouses and tenements, silent beacons of the liberty still
burning in the hearts of a brave and ancient people. And that
Christmas Eve, not far from where we stand, a candle burned all
night in the White House, like others all across America, glowing
in solidarity with the Polish people.
When spring came, a time of renewal and rebirth, Lech
Walesa's fate was still unknown. And as colleges and
universities approached graduation, one by one, again and again,
the same two names were heard. Lech Walesa. Solidarity.
2
of course, Lech Walesa could not come to accept those
honorary degrees. And so in crowded assembly halls and packed
arenas across America, where every precious space was filled with
proud and loving families, stage after stage held a single,
unfilled place -- an empty chair, bearing only the Solidarity
banner -- awaiting the release of Lech Walesa, and the liberation
of the Polish people.
We saw empty chairs in Maine and Illinois, Pennsylvania and
California. At Notre Dame, the crowd stood for three minutes in
cheering tribute to the empty chair and the man who wasn't there.
At Holy Cross, Lane Kirkland accepted the award on Lech Walesa's
behalf. And back in Poland, in a humble wooden church on the
outskirts of Gdansk, an empty chair was placed near the altar for
the baptism of tiny Maria-Victoria, Lech's seventh child, a
little girl he had never seen.
For eight years, these empty chairs, and the American
people, have waited for you to come. They have waited because we
believe in freedom. They have waited because we believe in
Poland. They have waited because we believe in you.
Today, the waiting is over. Today, Lech Walesa -- man of
freedom, is at the White House -- the house of freedom.
[ [TURN TO WALESA] Lech Walesa, on behalf of the people of
the Unites States, I am proud to say to you today: "Take your
place in this house of freedom. Take your place in the empty
chair. " [GESTURE TO CHAIR WITH SOLIDARITY BANNER] ]
3
You represent a great people and a great nation. Even more,
you represent an idea -- an idea whose time has come. And
nothing can stop an idea whose time has come.
The idea is freedom. And the time is now.
The dictators and the generals called you a "nobody." But
Lenin and Stalin have been disproved, not by Presidents or
Princes, but by the likes of an electrician from Gdansk and a
housewife from Manila. The iron curtain is fast becoming a
rusted, abandoned relic, symbolizing a lost era and a failed
ideology. And century that was born in war and revolution may
bequeath a legacy of peace unthinkable only a few years ago.
That doesn't mean we embrace today's popular refrain that
Michael nickson.
says, "History is over. I don't believe history is over. For
story of our times is the story of brave men and women who
fello
seized a moment, who took a stand.
about
deleting.
Lech Walesa showed how one individual could inspire in
others a faith so powerful that it vindicated itself, and changed
the course of a nation. History may make men. But Lech Walesa
has made history.
Poland
And I believe history continues to be made every day, by
small, daily acts of courage, by people who strive to make a
difference. Such people, says Lech, "are everywhere, in every
factory, steel mill, mine and shipyard, everywhere." And we've
certainly seen them in the American labor movement, where from
the leadership of Lane Kirkland to the rank and file across the
4
nation, they have struggled in the vanguard of the free labor
movement around the world.
Our own humble electrician, Ben Franklin, who like Lech
Walesa seized lightning from the skies and brought it to earth,
declared that "Our cause is the cause of all mankind, for we are
fighting for their liberty in defending our own."
Country by country, people by people, year by year,
courageous new voices are raised in a hundred languages.
In
1
S
Spanish. German. Chinese. Russian. Afghan. And yet -- like
the miracle of tongues -- from these varied lips comes a word all
can understand. FREEDOM. As if with one voice the people of the
world have cried out. FREEDOM.
In America, it is our greatest natural resource, the secret
of our success.
Ten
10 days from now, mothers and fathers will rise at first
light to set log fires crackling and turkeys in the oven, and so
begin a day of thanksgiving and remembrance. By candlelight and
firelight, from the village greens of New England, to the
houseboats of the Gulf of Mexico, the farmhouses of Indiana, the
snowy cabins of the Dakotas, and the make-shift living rooms in
re-born San Francisco, Americans will gather to bow their heads
in prayer.
Thanksgiving is the oldest, the most American of holidays,
dating back to our very origins as a people. It comes without
fireworks or presents. It comes without colored lights or
colored eggs, without costumes or masks or midnight horns.
5
It is a time of gratitude. A time to give thanks. A time
to remember what we stand for -- and why our forbearers
sacrificed so much to come here and to build this great land.
America. The very word excited visions in Europe from the
earliest days of the explorers. America is a refuge for hope, a
place where ideas and dreams and people are protected, like a
candle from the wind, to keep hope alive until the darkness lifts
and the sun shines on a people free and secure.
tech Walesa,
Today, you take your rightful seat in this bastion of
democracy, here in the house of freedom. But there are others
less fortunate, standing in the shoes of repression that you once
wore. And our work remains undone until every chair is filled.
Here in the White House, here in America, empty chairs
remain for people like Guillermo Endara, the democratically
elected President of Panama, his head bloodied but unbowed by
Noriega's lead-pipe politics. For Violeta Chamorro, the widowed
editor of Nicaragua's opposition newspaper. For Prince Sihanouk
of Cambodia. And yes, for Nelson Mandela, who we hope will soon
be freed.
Lech Walesa, by your abiding faith, and by the miracle of
democracy's new birth in your homeland, you have come to
personify the new breeze that's sweeping the world East and West,
the spiritual godfather of a new generation of democracy.
Your example, and the example of the Polish people, has
inspired hope and change in Hungary, East Germany, and all of
Europe. Even while Solidarity was banned, your example, and the
6
example of the Polish people, was mirrored across Asia when
"People Power" became a chant, first in the Philippines, and then
in Pakistan, and South Korea, and yes, even in Tianamen Square.
The whole world is watching. And the whole world is with
you.
Thank you, Poland -- for showing us that the dream is alive
even behind the Iron Curtain. Thank you, Poland, for showing us
that a dream wrought by flesh and blood cannot be stilled by
walls of steel. Thank you, Poland. And thank you, Lech Walesa.
And now, it is with great pride and humility that I bestow
upon Lech Walesa, of Gdansk, Poland, our nation's highest
civilian honor -- a medal previously awarded to the likes of
Martin Luther King, George Meany, Anwar Sadat and Mother Teresa.
The Presidential Medal of Freedom.
#
#
#
CLOSE HOLD
SENSITIVE
Document No. 088582SS
WHITE HOUSE STAFFING MEMORANDUM
11/7/89
11/8/89 4:00 PM
DATE:
ACTION/CONCURRENCE/COMMENT DUE BY:
PRESIDENTIAL REMARKS: LECH WALESA
SUBJECT:
ACTION FYI
ACTION FYI
VICE PRESIDENT
MCCLURE
SUNUNU
NEWMAN
SCOWCROFT
PORTER
DARMAN
ROGICH
BATES
UNTERMEYER
ROGERS
CARD
WINSTON
CICCONI
DEMAREST
PINKERTON
FITZWATER
GRAY
HAGIN
REMARKS:
Please forward any comments directly to Chriss Winston, Rm. 122,
x2930, no later than 4:00 PM, Wednesday, November 8, with a copy
to my office. Thank you.
RESPONSE:
CLOSE HOLD
SENSITIVE
Ace comments
25 Ed 8 100.68 68
James W. Cicconi
Assistant to the President
and Deputy to the Chief of Staff
Ext. 2702
McNally/Simon
November 7, 1989
1989
NOV
-
7
PM
5 Draft Three (B:LECH)
PRESIDENTIAL REMARKS: LECH WALESA MEDAL OF FREEDOM
THE EAST ROOM, THE WHITE HOUSE
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 1989
Just before Christmas, 1981, a darkness descended across
Poland for the second time this century. What had begun as a
year of hope and freedom ended in violence and repression.
In snow-filled crossroads and town-squares across the
nation, iron tanks rumbled to a stop. Lech Walesa made a cross
on the foreheads of his sleeping children, and was taken away
into the night. Solidarity, a movement embracing more than half
the Polish people, was outlawed. Communications with the outside
world were cut. And Poland awoke to snow and steel and silence,
an entire nation imprisoned.
But as man has learned from Budapest to Beijing, you can't
lock up a dream. That night, candles lit the windows of Poland's
farmhouses and tenements, silent beacons of the liberty still
burning in the hearts of a brave and ancient people. And that
Christmas Eve, not far from where we stand, a candle burned all
night in the White House, like others all across America, glowing
in solidarity with the Polish people.
When spring came, a time of renewal and rebirth, Lech
Walesa's fate was still unknown. And as colleges and
universities approached graduation, one by one, again and again,
the same two names were heard. Lech Walesa. Solidarity.
2
of course, Lech Walesa could not come to accept those
honorary degrees. And so in crowded assembly halls and packed
arenas across America, where every precious space was filled with
proud and loving families, stage after stage held a single,
unfilled place -- an empty chair, bearing only the Solidarity
banner -- awaiting the release of Lech Walesa, and the liberation
of the Polish people.
We saw empty chairs in Maine and Illinois, Pennsylvania and
California. At Notre Dame, the crowd stood for three minutes in
cheering tribute to the empty chair and the man who wasn't there.
At Holy Cross, Lane Kirkland accepted the award on Lech Walesa's
behalf. And back in Poland, in a humble wooden church on the
outskirts of Gdansk, an empty chair was placed near the altar for
the baptism of tiny Maria-Victoria, Lech's seventh child, a
little girl he had never seen.
For eight years, these empty chairs, and the American
people, have waited for you to come. They have waited because we
believe in freedom. They have waited because we believe in
Poland. They have waited because we believe in you.
Today, the waiting is over. Today, Lech Walesa -- man of
freedom, is at the White House -- the house of freedom.
[[TURN TO WALESA]] Lech Walesa, on behalf of the people of
the Unites States, I am proud to say to you today: "Take your
place in this house of freedom. Take your place in the empty
chair." [GESTURE TO CHAIR WITH SOLIDARITY BANNER]]
3
You represent a great people and a great nation. Even more,
you represent an idea -- an idea whose time has come. And
nothing can stop an idea whose time has come.
The idea is freedom. And the time is now.
The dictators and the generals called you a "nobody." But
Lenin and Stalin have been disproved, not by Presidents or
Princes, but by the likes of an electrician from Gdansk and a
housewife from Manila. The iron curtain is fast becoming a
rusted, abandoned relic, symbolizing a lost era and a failed
ideology. And century that was born in war and revolution may
bequeath a legacy of peace unthinkable only a few years ago.
That doesn't mean we embrace today's popular refrain that
says, "History is over." I don't believe history is over. For
the story of our times is the story of brave men and women who
seized a moment, who took a stand.
Lech Walesa showed how one individual could inspire in
others a faith so powerful that it vindicated itself, and changed
the course of a nation. History may make men. But Lech Walesa
has made history.
And I believe history continues to be made, every day, by
small, daily acts of courage, by people who strive to make a
difference. Such people, says Lech, "are everywhere, in every
factory, steel mill, mine and shipyard, everywhere." And we've
certainly seen them in the American labor movement, where from
the leadership of Lane Kirkland to the rank and file across the
4
nation, they have struggled in the vanguard of the free labor
movement around the world.
Our own humble electrician, Ben Franklin, who like Lech
Walesa seized lightning from the skies and brought it to earth,
declared that "Our cause is the cause of all mankind, for we are
fighting for their liberty in defending our own."
Country by country, people by people, year by year,
courageous new voices are raised in a hundred languages. In
Spanish. German. Chinese. Russian. Afghan. And yet --- like
the miracle of tongues -- from these varied lips comes a word all
can understand. FREEDOM. As if with one voice the people of the
world have cried out. FREEDOM.
In America, it is our greatest natural resource, the secret
of our success.
10 days from now, mothers and fathers will rise at first
light to set log fires crackling and turkeys in the oven, and so
begin a day of thanksgiving and remembrance. By candlelight and
firelight, from the village greens of New England, to the
houseboats of the Gulf of Mexico, the farmhouses of Indiana, the
snowy cabins of the Dakotas, and the make-shift living rooms in
re-born San Francisco, Americans will gather to bow their heads
in prayer.
Thanksgiving is the oldest, the most American of holidays,
dating back to our very origins as a people. It comes without
fireworks or presents. It comes without colored lights or
colored eggs, without costumes or masks or midnight horns.
5
It is a time of gratitude. A time to give thanks. A time
?
to remember what we stand for -- and why our
forbearers
FOREFATHERS.
sacrificed so much to come here and to build this great land.
America. The very word excited visions in Europe from the
earliest days of the explorers. America is a refuge for hope, a
place where ideas and dreams and people are protected, like a
Holers
candle from the wind, to keep hope alive until the darkness lifts
and the sun shines on a people free and secure.
Today, you take your rightful seat in this bastion of
democracy, here in the house of freedom. But there are others
MAKes NO
less fortunate,
SENSE
standing in the shoes of repression that you once
wore.
And our work remains undone until every chair is filled.
Here in the White House, here in America, empty chairs
remain for people like Guillermo Endara, the democratically
elected President of Panama, his head bloodied but unbowed by
Noriega's lead-pipe politics. For Violeta Chamorro, the widowed
editor of Nicaragua's opposition newspaper. For Prince Sihanouk
of Cambodia. And yes, for Nelson Mandela, who we hope will soon
be freed.
Lech Walesa, by your abiding faith, and by the miracle of
democracy's new birth in your homeland, you have come to
personify the new breeze that's sweeping the world East and West,
the spiritual godfather of a new generation of democracy.
Your example, and the example of the Polish people, has
inspired hope and change in Hungary, East Germany, and all of
Europe. Even while Solidarity was banned, your example, and the
6
example of the Polish people, was mirrored across Asia when
"People Power" became a chant, first in the Philippines, and then
in Pakistan, and South Korea, and yes, even in Tianamen Square.
The whole world is watching. And the whole world is with
Holeng
you.
Thank you, Poland -- for showing us that the dream is alive
even behind the Iron Curtain. Thank you, Poland, for showing us
AKWARD
that a dream
wrought by flesh and blood
cannot be stilled by
walls of steel. Thank you, Poland. And thank you, Lech Walesa.
And now, it is with great pride and humility that I bestow
upon Lech Walesa, of Gdansk, Poland, our nation's highest
civilian honor -- a medal previously awarded to the likes of
Martin Luther King, George Meany, Anwar Sadat and Mother Teresa.
The Presidential Medal of Freedom.
#
#
#
THE WHITE HOUSE
WASHINGTON
V
November 8, 1989
MEMORANDUM FOR CHRISS WINSTON
FROM:
ROGER B. PORTER RBP
SUBJECT:
Presidential Remarks: Lech Walesa
I have reviewed and concur with the attached Presidential
remarks for the Medal of Freedom presentation to Lech Walesa.
If you have any questions or we can help in any other
way, please let me know.
Attachment
C: James W. Cicconi
st :2d 8 130.68
CLOSE HOLD
SENSITIVE
Document No. 088582SS
WHITE HOUSE STAFFING MEMORANDUM
11/7/89
11/8/89 4:00 PM
DATE:
ACTION/CONCURRENCE/COMMENT DUE BY:
PRESIDENTIAL REMARKS: LECH WALESA
SUBJECT:
ACTION FYI
ACTION FYI
VICE PRESIDENT
MCCLURE
SUNUNU
NEWMAN
SCOWCROFT
PORTER
DARMAN
ROGICH
BATES
UNTERMEYER
CARD
ROGERS
WINSTON
CICCONI
DEMAREST
PINKERTON
FITZWATER
GRAY
HAGIN
REMARKS:
Please forward any comments directly to Chriss Winston, Rm. 122,
x2930, no llater than 4:00 PM, Wednesday, November 8, with a copy
to my office. Thank you.
RESPONSE:
CLOSE HOLD
SENSITIVE
James W. Cicconi
Assistant to the President
and Deputy to the Chief of Staff
Ext. 2702
McNally/Simon
November 7, 1989
1989
NOV
-
7
PM
Draft Three (B:LECH)
PRESIDENTIAL REMARKS: LECH WALESA MEDAL OF FREEDOM
THE EAST ROOM, THE WHITE HOUSE
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 1989
Just before Christmas, 1981, a darkness descended across
Poland for the second time this century. What had begun as a
year of hope and freedom ended in violence and repression.
In snow-filled crossroads and town-squares across the
nation, iron tanks rumbled to a stop. Lech Walesa made a cross
on the foreheads of his sleeping children, and was taken away
into the night. Solidarity, a movement embracing more than half
the Polish people, was outlawed. Communications with the outside
world were cut. And Poland awoke to snow and steel and silence,
an entire nation imprisoned.
But as man has learned from Budapest to Beijing, you can't
lock up a dream. That night, candles lit the windows of Poland's
farmhouses and tenements, silent beacons of the liberty still
burning in the hearts of a brave and ancient people. And that
Christmas Eve, not far from where we stand, a candle burned all
night in the White House, like others all across America, glowing
in solidarity with the Polish people.
When spring came, a time of renewal and rebirth, Lech
Walesa's fate was still unknown. And as colleges and
universities approached graduation, one by one, again and again,
the same two names were heard. Lech Walesa. Solidarity.
2
of course, Lech Walesa could not come to accept those
honorary degrees. And so in crowded assembly halls and packed
arenas across America, where every precious space was filled with
proud and loving families, stage after stage held a single,
unfilled place -- an empty chair, bearing only the Solidarity
banner -- awaiting the release of Lech Walesa, and the liberation
of the Polish people.
We saw empty chairs in Maine and Illinois, Pennsylvania and
California. At Notre Dame, the crowd stood for three minutes in
cheering tribute to the empty chair and the man who wasn't there.
At Holy Cross, Lane Kirkland accepted the award on Lech Walesa's
behalf. And back in Poland, in a humble wooden church on the
outskirts of Gdansk, an empty chair was placed near the altar for
the baptism of tiny Maria-Victoria, Lech's seventh child, a
little girl he had never seen.
For eight years, these empty chairs, and the American
people, have waited for you to come. They have waited because we
believe in freedom. They have waited because we believe in
Poland. They have waited because we believe in you.
Today, the waiting is over. Today, Lech Walesa -- man of
freedom, is at the White House -- the house of freedom.
[[TURN TO WALESA]] Lech Walesa, on behalf of the people of
the Unites States, I am proud to say to you today: "Take your
place in this house of freedom. Take your place in the empty
chair.' [GESTURE TO CHAIR WITH SOLIDARITY BANNER]]
3
You represent a great people and a great nation. Even more,
you represent an idea -- an idea whose time has come. And
nothing can stop an idea whose time has come.
The idea is freedom. And the time is now.
The dictators and the generals called you a "nobody." But
Lenin and Stalin have been disproved, not by Presidents or
Princes, but by the likes of an electrician from Gdansk and a
housewife from Manila. The iron curtain is fast becoming a
rusted, abandoned relic, symbolizing a lost era and a failed
ideology. And century that was born in war and revolution may
bequeath a legacy of peace unthinkable only a few years ago.
That doesn't mean we embrace today's popular refrain that
says, "History is over. " I don't believe history is over. For
the story of our times is the story of brave men and women who
seized a moment, who took a stand.
Lech Walesa showed how one individual could inspire in
others a faith so powerful that it vindicated itself, and changed
the course of a nation. History may make men. But Lech Walesa
has made history.
And I believe history continues to be made, every day, by
small, daily acts of courage, by people who strive to make a
difference. Such people, says Lech, "are everywhere, in every
factory, steel mill, mine and shipyard, everywhere." And we've
certainly seen them in the American labor movement, where from
the leadership of Lane Kirkland to the rank and file across the
4
nation, they have struggled in the vanguard of the free labor
movement around the world.
Our own humble electrician, Ben Franklin, who like Lech
Walesa seized lightning from the skies and brought it to earth,
declared that "Our cause is the cause of all mankind, for we are
fighting for their liberty in defending our own."
Country by country, people by people, year by year,
courageous new voices are raised in a hundred languages. In
Spanish. German. Chinese. Russian. Afghan. And yet -- like
the miracle of tongues -- from these varied lips comes a word all
can understand. FREEDOM. As if with one voice the people of the
world have cried out. FREEDOM.
In America, it is our greatest natural resource, the secret
of our success.
10 days from now, mothers and fathers will rise at first
light to set log fires crackling and turkeys in the oven, and so
begin a day of thanksgiving and remembrance. By candlelight and
firelight, from the village greens of New England, to the
houseboats of the Gulf of Mexico, the farmhouses of Indiana, the
snowy cabins of the Dakotas, and the make-shift living rooms in
re-born San Francisco, Americans will gather to bow their heads
in prayer.
Thanksgiving is the oldest, the most American of holidays,
dating back to our very origins as a people. It comes without
fireworks or presents. It comes without colored lights or
colored eggs, without costumes or masks or midnight horns.
5
It is a time of gratitude. A time to give thanks. A time
to remember what we stand for -- and why our forbearers
sacrificed so much to come here and to build this great land.
America. The very word excited visions in Europe from the
earliest days of the explorers. America is a refuge for hope, a
place where ideas and dreams and people are protected, like a
candle from the wind, to keep hope alive until the darkness lifts
and the sun shines on a people free and secure.
Today, you take your rightful seat in this bastion of
democracy, here in the house of freedom. But there are others
less fortunate, standing in the shoes of repression that you once
wore. And our work remains undone until every chair is filled.
Here in the White House, here in America, empty chairs
remain for people like Guillermo Endara, the democratically
elected President of Panama, his head bloodied but unbowed by
Noriega's lead-pipe politics. For Violeta Chamorro, the widowed
editor of Nicaragua's opposition newspaper. For Prince Sihanouk
of Cambodia. And yes, for Nelson Mandela, who we hope will soon
be freed.
Lech Walesa, by your abiding faith, and by the miracle of
democracy's new birth in your homeland, you have come to
personify the new breeze that's sweeping the world East and West,
the spiritual godfather of a new generation of democracy.
Your example, and the example of the Polish people, has
inspired hope and change in Hungary, East Germany, and all of
Europe. Even while Solidarity was banned, your example, and the
6
example of the Polish people, was mirrored across Asia when
"People Power" became a chant, first in the Philippines, and then
in Pakistan, and South Korea, and yes, even in Tianamen Square.
The whole world is watching. And the whole world is with
you.
Thank you, Poland -- for showing us that the dream is alive
even behind the Iron Curtain. Thank you, Poland, for showing us
that a dream wrought by flesh and blood cannot be stilled by
walls of steel. Thank you, Poland. And thank you, Lech Walesa.
And now, it is with great pride and humility that I bestow
upon Lech Walesa, of Gdansk, Poland, our nation's highest
civilian honor -- a medal previously awarded to the likes of
Martin Luther King, George Meany, Anwar Sadat and Mother Teresa.
The Presidential Medal of Freedom.
#
#
#
THE WHITE HOUSE
washjngton
November 8, 1989
MEMORANDUM FOR CHRISS WINSTON
FROM:
STEPHEN G. RADEMAKER
SR
ASSOCIATE COUNSEL TO THE PRESIDENT
SUBJECT:
Presidential Remarks: Lech Walesa
Pursuant to James Cicconi's request, Counsel's Office has
reviewed the above-referenced matter and has no objection to the
presidential remarks.
CC: James W. Cicconi
SO : I/V 8 100 68
McNally/Simon
November 7, 1989
Draft Three (B:LECH)
PRESIDENTIAL REMARKS: LECH WALESA MEDAL OF FREEDOM
THE EAST ROOM, THE WHITE HOUSE
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 1989
Just before Christmas, 1981, a darkness descended across
Poland for the second time this century. What had begun as a
year of hope and freedom ended in violence and repression.
In snow-filled crossroads and town-squares across the
nation, iron tanks rumbled to a stop. Lech Walesa made a cross
on the foreheads of his sleeping children, and was taken away
into the night. Solidarity, a movement embracing more than half
the Polish people, was outlawed. Communications with the outside
world were cut. And Poland awoke to snow and steel and silence,
an entire nation imprisoned.
But as man has learned from Budapest to Beijing, you can't
lock up a dream. That night, candles lit the windows of Poland's
farmhouses and tenements, silent beacons of the liberty still
burning in the hearts of a brave and ancient people. And that
Christmas Eve, not far from where we stand, a candle burned all
night in the White House, like others all across America, glowing
in solidarity with the Polish people.
When spring came, a time of renewal and rebirth, Lech
Walesa's fate was still unknown. And as colleges and
universities approached graduation, one by one, again and again,
the same two names were heard. Lech Walesa. Solidarity.
2
of course, Lech Walesa could not come to accept those
honorary degrees. And so in crowded assembly halls and packed
arenas across America, where every precious space was filled with
proud and loving families, stage after stage held a single,
unfilled place -- an empty chair, bearing only the Solidarity
banner -- awaiting the release of Lech Walesa, and the liberation
of the Polish people.
We saw empty chairs in Maine and Illinois, Pennsylvania and
California. At Notre Dame, the crowd stood for three minutes in
cheering tribute to the empty chair and the man who wasn't there.
At Holy Cross, Lane Kirkland accepted the award on Lech Walesa's
behalf. And back in Poland, in a humble wooden church on the
outskirts of Gdansk, an empty chair was placed near the altar for
the baptism of tiny Maria-Victoria, Lech's seventh child, a
little girl he had never seen.
For eight years, these empty chairs, and the American
people, have waited for you to come. They have waited because we
believe in freedom. They have waited because we believe in
Poland. They have waited because we believe in you.
Today, the waiting is over. Today, Lech Walesa -- man of
freedom, is at the White House -- the house of freedom.
[[TURN TO WALESA] Lech Walesa, on behalf of the people of
the Unites States, I am proud to say to you today: "Take your
place in this house of freedom. Take your place in the empty
chair.' " [GESTURE TO CHAIR WITH SOLIDARITY BANNER]]
3
You represent a great people and a great nation. Even more,
you represent an idea -- an idea whose time has come. And
nothing can stop an idea whose time has come.
The idea is freedom. And the time is now.
The dictators and the generals called you a "nobody." But
Lenin and Stalin have been disproved, not by Presidents or
Princes, but by the likes of an electrician from Gdansk and a
housewife from Manila. The iron curtain is fast becoming a
rusted, abandoned relic, symbolizing a lost era and a failed
ideology. And century that was born in war and revolution may
bequeath a legacy of peace unthinkable only a few years ago.
That doesn't mean we embrace today's popular refrain that
says, "History is over. " I don't believe history is over. For
the story of our times is the story of brave men and women who
seized a moment, who took a stand.
Lech Walesa showed how one individual could inspire in
others a faith so powerful that it vindicated itself, and changed
the course of a nation. History may make men. But Lech Walesa
has made history.
And I believe history continues to be made, every day, by
small, daily acts of courage, by people who strive to make a
difference. Such people, says Lech, "are everywhere, in every
factory, steel mill, mine and shipyard, everywhere." And we've
certainly seen them in the American labor movement, where from
the leadership of Lane Kirkland to the rank and file across the
4
nation, they have struggled in the vanguard of the free labor
movement around the world.
Our own humble electrician, Ben Franklin, who like Lech
Walesa seized lightning from the skies and brought it to earth,
declared that "Our cause is the cause of all mankind, for we are
fighting for their liberty in defending our own."
Country by country, people by people, year by year,
courageous new voices are raised in a hundred languages. In
Spanish. German. Chinese. Russian. Afghan. And yet -- like
the miracle of tongues -- from these varied lips comes a word all
can understand. FREEDOM. As if with one voice the people of the
world have cried out. FREEDOM.
In America, it is our greatest natural resource, the secret
of our success.
10 days from now, mothers and fathers will rise at first
light to set log fires crackling and turkeys in the oven, and so
begin a day of thanksgiving and remembrance. By candlelight and
firelight, from the village greens of New England, to the
houseboats of the Gulf of Mexico, the farmhouses of Indiana, the
snowy cabins of the Dakotas, and the make-shift living rooms in
re-born San Francisco, Americans will gather to bow their heads
in prayer.
Thanksgiving is the oldest, the most American of holidays,
dating back to our very origins as a people. It comes without
fireworks or presents. It comes without colored lights or
colored eggs, without costumes or masks or midnight horns.
5
It is a time of gratitude. A time to give thanks. A time
to remember what we stand for -- and why our forbearers
sacrificed so much to come here and to build this great land.
America. The very word excited visions in Europe from the
earliest days of the explorers. America is a refuge for hope, a
place where ideas and dreams and people are protected, like a
candle from the wind, to keep hope alive until the darkness lifts
and the sun shines on a people free and secure.
Today, you take your rightful seat in this bastion of
democracy, here in the house of freedom. But there are others
less fortunate, standing in the shoes of repression that you once
wore. And our work remains undone until every chair is filled.
Here in the White House, here in America, empty chairs
remain for people like Guillermo Endara, the democratically
elected President of Panama, his head bloodied but unbowed by
Noriega's lead-pipe politics. For Violeta Chamorro, the widowed
editor of Nicaragua's opposition newspaper. For Prince Sihanouk
of Cambodia. And yes, for Nelson Mandela, who we hope will soon
be freed.
Lech Walesa, by your abiding faith, and by the miracle of
democracy's new birth in your homeland, you have come to
personify the new breeze that's sweeping the world East and West,
the spiritual godfather of a new generation of democracy.
Your example, and the example of the Polish people, has
inspired hope and change in Hungary, East Germany, and all of
Europe. Even while Solidarity was banned, your example, and the
6
example of the Polish people, was mirrored across Asia when
"People Power" became a chant, first in the Philippines, and then
in Pakistan, and South Korea, and yes, even in Tianamen Square.
The whole world is watching. And the whole world is with
you.
Thank you, Poland -- for showing us that the dream is alive
even behind the Iron Curtain. Thank you, Poland, for showing us
that a dream wrought by flesh and blood cannot be stilled by
walls of steel. Thank you, Poland. And thank you, Lech Walesa.
And now, it is with great pride and humility that I bestow
upon Lech Walesa, of Gdansk, Poland, our nation's highest
civilian honor -- a medal previously awarded to the likes of
Martin Luther King, George Meany, Anwar Sadat and Mother Teresa.
The Presidential Medal of Freedom.
#
#
#
3yr
with
Funding agreement veto
haan sparaed Pres.
ly/Simon
approps. - to day threat :
ber 7, 1989
Three (B:LECH)
finished 1990
FOUR
PRI
SA MEDAL OF FREEDOM
1 yr. #5 -
ROOM, THE WHITE HOUSE
VEMBER 13, 1989
Just $418 mill
ness descended across
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of
Poland fo:
What had begun as a year
of hope al
$240
guarantees
d repression.
In S:
squares across the
nation, i
grant $200
psi $50
Lech Walesa made a cross
on the fo
food $ 125
en, and was taken away
into the
other
ins labor trainin
embracing more than half
the Polisn nation, was Outiaweu. Cmunications with the outside
world were cutoff. And Poland awoke to snow and steel and
silence, an entire nation imprisoned.
But as man has learned from Budapest to Beijing, you can't
lock up a dream. That night, candles lit the windows of Poland's
farmhouses and tenements, silent beacons of the liberty still
burning in the hearts of a brave and ancient people. And that
Christmas Eve, not far from where we stand, a candle burned all
night in the White House, like others all across America, glowing
in solidarity with the Polish people.
When spring came, a time of renewal and rebirth, Lech
Walesa's fate was still unknown. And as colleges and
universities approached graduation, one by one, again and again,
the same two names were heard. Lech Walesa. Solidarity.
2
of course, Lech Walesa could not come to accept those
honorary degrees. And so in crowded assembly halls and packed
arenas across America, where every precious space was filled with
proud and loving families, stage after stage held a single,
unfilled place -- an empty chair, bearing only the Solidarity
banner -- awaiting the release of Lech Walesa, and the liberation
of the Polish people.
We saw empty chairs in Maine and Illinois, Pennsylvania and
California. At Notre Dame, the crowd stood for three minutes in
cheering tribute to the empty chair and the man who wasn't there.
At Holy Cross, Lane Kirkland accepted the award on Lech Walesa's
behalf. And back in Poland, in a humble wooden church on the
outskirts of Gdansk, an empty chair was placed near the altar for
the baptism of tiny Maria-Victoria, Lech's seventh child, a
little girl he had never seen.
For eight years, these empty chairs, and the American
people, have waited for you to come. We have waited because we
believe in freedom. We have waited because we believe in Poland.
We have waited because we believe in you.
Today, the waiting is over. Today, Lech Walesa -- man of
freedom, is at the White House -- the house of freedom.
[ [TURN TO WALESA] Lech Walesa, on behalf of the people of
the Unites States, I am proud to say to you today: "Take your
place in this house of freedom. Take your place in the empty
chair. " [ [GESTURE TO CHAIR WITH SOLIDARITY BANNER]
3
You represent a great people and a great nation. Even more,
you represent an idea -- an idea whose time has come. And
nothing can stop an idea whose time has come.
The idea is freedom. And the time is now.
You were called a "nobody." But Lenin and Stalin have been
disproven, not by Presidents or Princes, but by the likes of an
electrician from Gdansk and his fellow workers in a brave union
called Solidarity. The iron curtain is fast becoming a rusted,
abandoned relic, symbolizing a lost era and a failed ideology.
Poland. Hungary. East Germany. Czechloslovakia. The chance is
everywhere. And now a century that was born in war and
revolution may bequeath a legacy of peace unthinkable only a few
years ago.
The story of our times is the story of brave men and women
who seized a moment, who took a stand. Lech Walesa showed how
one individual could inspire in others a faith so powerful that
it vindicated itself, and changed the course of a nation.
History may make men. But Lech Walesa has made history.
And I believe history continues to be made, every day, by
small, daily acts of courage, by people who strive to make a
difference. Such people, says Lech, "are everywhere, in every
factory, steel mill, mine and shipyard, everywhere." And we've
certainly seen them in the American labor movement, where from
the leadership of Lane Kirkland to the rank and file across the
nation, they have struggled in the vanguard of the free labor
movement around the world.
4
Our own humble electrician, Ben Franklin, who like Lech
Walesa seized lightning from the skies and brought it to earth,
declared that "Our cause is the cause of all mankind, for we are
fighting for their liberty in defending our own."
Country by country, people by people, year by year,
courageous new voices are raised in a hundred languages. In
Spanish. German. Chinese. Russian. Afghan. And yet -- like
the miracle of tongues -- from these varied lips comes a word all
can understand. FREEDOM. As if with one voice the people of the
world have spoken. FREEDOM.
In America, it is our greatest natural resource, the secret
of our success.
Ten days from now, mothers and fathers across America will
rise at first light to set log fires crackling and turkeys in the
oven, and so begin a day of thanksgiving and remembrance. By
candlelight and firelight, from the village greens of New
England, to the make-shift living rooms in re-born San Francisco,
Americans will gather to bow their heads in prayer.
Thanksgiving is the oldest, the most American of holidays,
dating back to our very origins as a people. It comes without
fireworks or presents. It comes without colored lights or
colored eggs, without costumes or masks or midnight horns.
It is a time of gratitude. A time to give thanks. A time
to remember what we stand for -- and why our forbearers
sacrificed so much to come here and to build this great land.
5
America. The very word excited visions in Europe from the
earliest days of the explorers. America is a refuge for hope, a
place where ideas and dreams and people are protected, like a
candle from the wind, to keep hope alive until the darkness lifts
and the sun shines on a people free and secure.
Today, Lech Walesa, you take your rightful seat in this
bastion of democracy, here in the house of freedom But there
still waiting around thoused.
are others less fortunate, standing in the shoes of repression
that you once wore. And our work remains undone until every
chair is filled. Here in the White House, here in America,
empty chairs remain for people like Guillermo Endara, the
democratically elected President of Panama, his head bloodied but
unbowed by Noriega's lead-pipe politics. For Violeta Chamorro,
the widowed editor of Nicaragua's opposition newspaper. For
Prince Sihanouk of Cambodia. And yes, for Nelson Mandela, who we
hope will soon be freed.
Lech Walesa, by your abiding faith, and by the miracle of
democracy's new birth in your homeland, you have come to
personify the new breeze that is sweeping the world East and
West, the spiritual godfather of a new generation of democracy.
Even while Solidarity was banned, your example, and the
example of the Polish people, was mirrored across Asia when
"People Power" became a chant, first in the Philippines, and then
in Pakistan, and South Korea, and yes, even in Tianamen Square.
The whole world is watching. And the whole world is with
you.
6
Thank you, Poland -- for showing us that the dream is alive.
Thank you, Poland, for showing us that a dream wrought by flesh
and blood cannot be stilled by walls of steel. Thank you,
Poland. And thank you, Lech Walesa.
And now, it is with great pride and humility that I bestow
upon Lech Walesa, of Gdansk, Poland, our nation's highest
civilian honor -- a medal previously awarded to the likes of
Martin Luther King, George Meany, Anwar Sadat and Mother Teresa.
The Presidential Medal of Freedom.
#
#
#
CITATION
Lech Walesa has shown through his life and work the power of
one individual's ideals when combined with the irresistible force
of freedom. Through moral authority, force of personality, and
demonstrated heroism, he has inspired a nation -- and the world
-- in the cause of liberty. The United States honors a true man
of his times and of timeless ideals, Lech Walesa, distinguished
son of Poland and champion of universal human rights.
1 : 1 5