322

REMARKS TO NATIONAL CONVENTION, JUNIOR
CHAMBER OF COMMERCE, BALTIMORE

June 27, 1967

I welcome you to Maryland where the crosscurrents of thought from
north and south meet and merge, where the union of states was pre-
served and its anthem inspired, where a nation's boundless beauty is
cast in miniature, where pleasant living is the everyday fact of life,
and where a people are in mourning for a baseball team that can't
seem to bring itself back to greatness.

I don't think there is a person in our State who wouldn't trade the
Chesapeake Bay for a few base hits or the Patapsco River for a flood
of Oriole runs or a Governor for one strong-armed pitcher who can put
three straight strikes across the plate.

As host to this convention of dedicated and involved leadership, I
invite you not only to meet in our midst but to live among us. To see
where it happened at Fort McHenry and Antietam and Frederick and
old Annapolis, and to see where it's happening today as you tour
Maryland's giant space industries or catch the tempo of ships moving
in and out of the great Port of Baltimore.

And as you linger and look here, you will find that Marylanders,
like yourselves, live very much in the present. For all our landmarks
and traditions we are today people absorbed in today's problems and
challenges and while we maintain a respectful reverence for the past,
we set our sail to prevailing winds and set our sights to destinations
ahead. We bury old cities to build new ones. We bend old barriers
to open new gates. We let the past provide the setting but not the
settlement for the future.

In the nation's oldest active statehouse where General Washington
resigned his wartime commission, modern legislators meet to pass
revolutionary laws, and where John Paul Jones now rests in peace, we
commission future captains to help keep the world's peace, and to carry
America's message and might across the seas. There is something very
historic about Maryland that will enchant you, but something very
young and vital that communicates with the same degree of vigor and
confidence that you bring to your work in your community.

There is something here of every state, and one who is not a stranger
to his own land and legends will feel himself immediately at home. So
know that you are among friends, that we are honored by your pres-