Newspaper Editors, the National Editorial Association, the National
Press Club, the American Newspaper Women's Club, the Sigma Delta
Chi and Theta Sigma Phi national journalism societies and other
newspaper people who are here for these ceremonies. Your presence is
reassuring to those of us who are resolved to build upon this site a
suitable memorial to the journalists of our country.

Ben Franklin ranked a good newspaper with the Bible, the church
and the school as "the chief support of virtue, morality, civil liberty
and religion" And, of course, good newspapers are impossible with-
out good newspaper men and newspaper women to produce them.
And so, it is altogether fitting, I think, that we erect this National
Newspaper Hall of Fame in appreciation of the contribution news-
paper people have made to our society and our civilization.

One of the first of my official acts as Governor of Maryland was to
issue a proclamation designating Gathland State Park as the site of
a National Hall of Fame. In that proclamation, issued on June 16,
1959, I stated that the institution would "serve the whole American
press to perpetuate the memory of its great members, servants of
human freedom and democratic institutions. "

Since that time, your State government, through the Department
of Forests and Parks, the Board of Public Works, the tourist divi-
sion of the Department of Economic Development and other agen-
cies, has moved along steadily to bring these plans to fruition.

And here I wish to express my gratitude and the gratitude of the
people of Maryland, to the press of our State for the time, the en-
ergy and the talent it has expended on this project. The Maryland-
Delaware Press Association promptly accepted the responsibility and
shouldered the burden of bringing into being this Hall of Fame for
American journalists. The plans which we are unveiling here today
are largely its handiwork. Without the generous assistance of this
Association—its officers and its membership—the advancement we have
made to date on the project would have been impossible. All Mary-
landers, and eventually all Americans, will I know, remember them
for the excellent work they have done in promoting this ambitious
undertaking.

The State of Maryland contends that history and reason entitles
it to a National Hall of Fame for distinguished American journal-
ists. It bases this claim on three main points:

First, it has, here at Gathland, the oldest monument dedicated to
men of the newspaper profession.

•161