113 STAT. 2142 PROCLAMATION 7222—SEPT. 16, 1999 Today we also honor the vahant famihes of oiir fellow citizens who remain missing—families who have had to suffer not only the absence of their loved ones, but also the uncertainty of their fate. As Americans, we remain imshakable in our resolve to achieve the fullest possible accounting of those missing and to strive to bring home the remains of those who have died. Only by doing so can we begin to acknowledge the debt we owe to these patriots and assuage the grief of the families they left behind for the sake of our Nation. On September 17, 1999, the flag of the National League of Families of American Prisoners of War and Missing in Southeast Asia, a black and white banner symbolizing America's missing and our unwavering determination to account for them, will be flown over the White House, the U.S. Capitol, the Departments of State, Defense, and Veterans Af- fairs, the Selective Service System Headquarters, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, the Korean War Veterans Memorial, national cemeteries, and other locations across our country. NOW. THEREFORE, I, WILLIAM J. CLINTON, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim September 17, 1999, as National POW/MIA Recognition Day. I ask all Americans to join me in honoring former American prisoners of war and those whose fate is still imdetermined. I also encourage the American people to remember with compassion and concern the courageous famihes who persevere in their quest to know the fate of their missing loved ones. Finally, I urge Federal, State, and local officials and private organizations to observe this day with appropriate ceremonies, programs, and activities. INL WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereimto set my hand this fifteenth day of September in the year of om* Lord nineteen hundred and ninety- nine, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and twenty-foiulh. WILLLyvI J. CLINTON Proclamation 7222 of September 16, 1999 Citizenship Day and Constitution Week, 1999 By the President of the United States of America A Proclamation The Constitution is perhaps our Nation's most cherished dociunent, the compass that has helped us chart America's course toward freedom, human dignity, and democracy for more than 200 years. Its text, born of the genius and idealism of our Founders and hammered out through hard effort and compromise by the delegates to the Constitutional Convention, established a system of government capable of responding to the pressures of social and political change. It created a sacred covenant that continues to bind all our citizens by a set of principles based on the ideals of equality, inclusion, and independence and by a delicate balance of powers, rights, and responsibilities among citizens and their State and Federal Governments. Today, sustained by the ef- forts and sacrifices of generations of Americans, the U.S. Constitution
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