Departments
& Services : Department of Parks & Recreation Programs
Special
Events
(read
Ben Bernanke's biography)
Ben
Bernanke Day
Friday, September 1, 2006
::
Click
here for information on purchasing a Bernanke Day DVD
::
Public Presentation of the "Order
of the Palmetto" with Reception at the Dillon County
Courthouse Lawn.
::
Click
here to view John Fowler's Article on Remembering Ben Bernanke
::
Remarks
by Chairman Ben S. Bernanke
At the presentation of the Order of the Palmetto, Dillon, South
Carolina
September 1, 2006
"I
am very pleased to have the opportunity to come back to Dillon
and very grateful for the honor you have done me today. Thank
you all very much for your thoughtfulness and your efforts to
prepare for this event. It is good to see so many people that
I remember, as well as their children and maybe even a few grandchildren.
My family’s
connection with Dillon goes back about sixty years. My grandfather
Jonas Bernanke and his wife, Lina, moved here in the 1940s when
Jonas purchased a local drugstore. Jonas named the store with
his own initials--hence Jay Bee Drugs. Jonas’s sons--my
dad and my uncle--bought the store from their father and ran
it as partners for many years. The original store was on Main
Street, but when the chain stores entered the local market,
my dad and uncle built a new, larger, and more modern store
a block off Main. They competed by offering personal, first-name
service, by delivering prescriptions without charge, and by
coming down to the store at any time, nights or Sundays, to
fill an emergency prescription. Dillon had very few doctors
at the time, and lots of people came to my dad and uncle for
advice on basic health matters. My mother, who gave up a job
teaching elementary school when I was born, often helped out
in the store. As a child, I was supposed to help out as well,
but I usually ended up in the store’s comic book section.
Our family
moved to Dillon when I was very small, and all my childhood
memories are here. I went to East Elementary, J.V. Martin Junior
High, and Dillon High School. Quite a few friends were classmates
for all twelve grades. I made many other friends playing saxophone
in the high-school marching band. My family and I attended Dillon’s
small synagogue, Ohav Shalom, which is unfortunately no longer
in existence.
As a
teenager, like many other teenagers, I itched to get away from
the small town in which I was raised to see the bright lights
of the big city. I got my wish, leaving when I was seventeen
to attend college and graduate school in Boston. I met my wife
in Boston, and we have lived in Palo Alto, California; Princeton,
New Jersey; and now Washington. We have two children, a son
and a daughter, now in graduate school and college, respectively.
My wife is a teacher and is meeting her classes today in a public
charter high school in Washington.
Although
the idea of leaving Dillon to attend college was exciting for
me, I realize now that I learned a lot from living here for
seventeen years. I learned, among many other lessons, a few
things about work. I saw the long hours and persistent effort
my parents put in to make their independent small business successful.
After I graduated from high school I spent the summer as a construction
worker helping to build Dillon’s Saint Eugene hospital,
and during the summers of my college years, I waited tables
six days a week at the South of the Border. I took two lessons
from those experiences: First, in small towns like Dillon and
in communities all across the United States, people work very
hard every day to support themselves and their families. I remember
that, on the first day I came home from the construction site
that summer, I was too tired to eat and I fell asleep in my
chair.
The second
thing I learned in Dillon is that Americans are economically
ambitious; they seek opportunity and advancement. I remember
the fellow construction worker who wanted to become foreman
someday and a waitress who was saving to go to college. I was
impressed by these experiences, and I think they were an important
reason I went into economics, which a great economist once called
the study of people in the ordinary business of life.
Now I
am an economic policy maker, and I sit in a nice office in Washington
looking at reports and tables of data and following the fluctuations
of the financial markets. However, I try not to forget what
underlies all those data: millions of Americans working hard,
trying to better themselves economically, struggling to manage
their family finances, and worrying about the price of gas and
college tuition. I take my work extremely seriously because
I know that, if my colleagues at the Federal Reserve and I do
our jobs right, we will help our economy prosper and give more
people the economic opportunities they seek.
Let me
thank you all again for inviting me back to Dillon and for sharing
this morning with me."
Speech
courteousy of the Federal
Reserve Board©
:: See
the 2006 Bernanke Day Picture Gallery ::
