“Dreams of peace of oneness and progress
Cherished goals our region presses
Striving to build a brighter dawn
For our children to call their own.”
-From the Cordillera Hymn
SERVICE is caring.
In government, social care revolves on the provision of social work, care for the citizenry. Government social services provide protection or social support services to the needy - children or adults who are at risk and those who need help arising from illness, disability, old age or poverty.
Government service and social care collectively “empowers people to live fulfilling lives and attain their highest potential.”
Government and its operatives from the highest official to the street sweeper, live their days for the purpose of serving and caring for others. Their words and actions are expressions of a life that provide comfort and inspiration to their fellowmen, especially the needy ones.
That being the case, government officials and workers, are necessarily professionals and experts in the provision of service and care, not people who get into the service to be served by other workers or the citizenry for that matter.
Herbert Hoover in recalling his 1932 defeat remarked that "democracy is a harsh employer." He was a president who did his very best to save America from the harshness of the Great Depression.
He was America's 31st president. He took office in 1929, the year the U.S. economy plummeted into its worst economic crises in so many years.
He was misunderstood by most Americans who saw him as a “remote, grim-faced man in a blue, double-breasted suit.”
The chronicles about his reign indicated he was serious in demeanor, a devoted and dedicated President to the care of those whom he was sworn to serve. Holding office at such a time, said Hoover was akin to being a repairman behind a dike.
"No sooner is one leak plugged up than it is necessary to dash over and stop another that has broken out. There is no end to it."
Defeated by Franklin D. Roosevelt of New York in the 1932 presidential election, Hoover’s voice, even in his wilderness years, was not silenced.
He wrote book after book and delivered countless speeches. A dedicated public servant he “raised tens of millions of dollars for favorite causes, such as his beloved Stanford University, where he was a member of the first graduating class in 1895.”
The Hoover Institution at Stanford which he dedicated in 1941 became one of the world's foremost scholarly centers and later a major recruiting ground for conservative US Presidents and their administrations.
Hoover also found a new cause, one that would engage him for the rest of his life when he joined the board of the Boys' Clubs of America and was elected as its chairman. This was to him the latest chapter in the story of an Iowa orphan “who had fed millions of children before he organized the American Child Health Association.”
He cared for the American youth declaring in 1937 that "the boy is our most precious possession." His goal for them was to start a hundred new Boys Clubs and save the youthful resident of urban America from a life "of stairs, light switches, alleys, fire escapes... and a chance to get run over by a truck," he said.
A boy denied the pleasures of nature had to contend with the policeman on the beat. But packs need not run into gangs, said Hoover, not so long as "pavement boys" had a place to play checkers and learn a trade, swim in a pool and steal nothing more harmful than second base,” he explained. Hoover more than met his goal after three years.
In May 1945, President Harry Truman invited Hoover to talk over the European food situation.
In 1946, Truman dispatched the seventy-one-year-old Hoover to 38 nations in an effort to beg, borrow, and cajole enough food to avert mass starvation among victims of World War II.
Thanks to Truman, Hoover was again doing what he did best, feeding people. Truman restored Hoover's name to the great dam that Roosevelt's administration had called Boulder Dam.
In 1947, he asked the Great Engineer to reorganize an executive branch of government bloated by war, to make it more efficient if not necessarily more conservative. It was a daunting task. But thanks to the Truman-Hoover partnership, America since World War 2 became the mightiest nation on the face of the globe – a prize that able citizens swore to serve and bestow to their fellow citizens and nation.
Service and caring are not American concepts alone but belong to the human race. I find these enshrined in the Cordillera Hymn too which resembles many a text and messages in my ancestors’ chants, prayers, songs, and salidumays. Let us give these flesh as many as we are able and capable.