Spencer Heath Archive

Item 1800

Toast Read by Spencer Heath at a dinner Meeting September 6, 1960 at the Cosmos Club, Washington, D.C., to discuss the Market Plaza Project in Knoxville, Tennessee, promoted by Spencer MacCallum under a grant from the Foundation for Voluntary Welfare, Burlingame CA. Also present:

William Johnson, Foundation for Voluntary Welfare, Burlingame, CA;

Hugh W. Sanford, Jr., Knoxville, Tennessee;

Albert E. Arent, Berge, Fox & Arent, Washington, D.C.

Hal R. Imus, Larry Smith & Company, Washington, D.C.

J. Ross McKeever, Urban Land Institute, Washington, D.C.

Spencer H. MacCallum, Waterford, Virginia;

Mrs. Heath MacCallum, Waterford, Virginia.

 

 

 

Gentlemen — including our would-be hostess, whose home in Waterford, Virginia was found too little acces­sible for this occasion:

 

     I am very happy that my grandson, Spencer MacCallum, has made it possible for me to have you as my honored guests here tonight. What makes me especially happy is that you men of keen vision and large affairs represent to me a beginning, in the heart of a city, of a creative, self-sustaining and non-subsidized, money-making solution of a most acute problem of our times — namely, the financial plight and central decay of nearly all of our cities. Not only this, but, in a distant perspective, the fulfill­ment of a far larger dream — the dream of a new age for mankind, an age in which freedom and productivity, prosperity and peace through proprietary community administration, not only in the thousands of suburban shopping towns and the like but also in the hearts of our cities as well, will become so popular and so profitable to all as at last to outgrow and supersede the present political, bureau­cratic and generally bankrupt administration of our public and community services and affairs. It is only a dream, shared in its fullness by few and visioned but dimly and in part, if at all, even by many now engaged in bringing it about.

 

     So here Is my fervent hope, my confident faith that by the highly qualified assistance and advice of you who are to confer here tonight — under sponsorship of The Foun­dation for Voluntary Welfare, of Burlingame, California — the Market Square project in Knoxville, Tennessee, will become so soundly organized and profitably administered as to become a pilot plant, as it were,

and a beacon far and wide.

 

     And now may I, as did that more ancient Heath-en, Socrates, invoke the blessing of the gods upon us all.

Beloved Pan

   And all ye other gods

Who here abide,

Grant us to be beautiful

In the inner man,

And all we have of outer things

To be at peace

   With those within.