Thursday, 05/10/2007 Print Version |

Governor Speaks at California Prayer Breakfast

GOVERNOR: Thank you very much. Thank you, Senator Scott, for the wonderful introduction. And I just want to say it’s great to be introduced by someone that is such a great leader as Senator Scott. He’s an education champion. He fights for all other causes, for everything, for the people of California, but when it comes to education, I tell you, he always blows me away when he comes down to our office and he has all these great, great ideas. So we are going to do a lot of things for education in these next few years because of your great, great help. So thank you very much for the nice introduction. Let’s give him a big hand. (Applause)

Then I want to thank all the other guest speakers, I know there were a lot of speakers on here this morning already. And Ken, what a fantastic speech. I just love this motivational speech that you had, and the great books that you write and all this. It’s really great.

And so I’m not going to be that long, because I know you have heard already a lot of speeches, plus I didn’t really come with a prepared speech, because I literally didn’t know that I’m going to talk to you today until just six months ago. But anyway, the thing that I do want to talk about today is service and volunteerism, and giving back to your community, giving back to your state, and giving back to your country, because I think this is so extremely important, and is the thing that makes this country so great.

And the reason why I thought about talking about this is because the other day I had a fellow come up to me at the Starbucks Café—which is a favorite place I go to get my coffee—and he came up to me and he said, "Oh, Governor, I’m so glad I ran into you. I just heard on television last night the terrible news about the gang violence in California, how gang violence is growing and growing, and it’s more killings, and all of this. This is terrible, this is outrageous. We have to do something about that."

And I said to him, I said, "Yes, you’re absolutely correct; we have to do something about it. Not just government; we, all of us, have to work together to do something about it," I said, "Because it’s very clear when you talk to law enforcement, they all will tell you that it needs suppression, it needs intervention, but it also needs prevention." And I said, "That’s where you come in, that’s where the ordinary person comes in, with prevention." I said, "You have to understand that a gang member did not choose, when he was born, that, ‘I want to be a gang member and I want to be a killer, and a drug dealer,’ or any of that. People don’t choose that when they are born." I said, "They are born, and then we create those things because of the circumstances and the environment they grow up in."

We know that any one of those people that become gang members, and they go out and sell dope and kill each other, if you take them out of that environment early on, and if you would have taken them to a family, let’s say my family, or any of your families, and they would have grown up with you, those kids would be in college, they will be smart, they will be going and striving towards a certain job and have certain goals, and they will have confidence and all that, but they would not be killers.

So this is where we come in; prevention. How can we prevent that from happening? Because those kids come from families, sometimes only one parent, the mother is gone or the father is gone. Sometimes there’s violence in the family, there are drugs, there is alcohol. We don’t know what the circumstances are. But one thing we know, that they get a lack of attention, a lack of education, a lack of love, a lack of mentoring, parenting, all of those things. And this is where you come in. This is where the average person comes in. Those kids, we can go and intervene, and we can go and help them with their education.

I said to this person, I said, "Have you ever thought about going to an inner-city school and going to an after school program and volunteer to help them with their reading and with their writing, and with their math, so they don’t fall behind in their tests, which makes them then later on drop out, because they discouraged? Have you ever thought to go to a school and to go and become a mentor? Have you ever thought about kind of adopting one of those kids, and then go and take them to the sports field and to movies, and to help them in every way possible so they feel the love somewhere else rather than having to go and join a gang to feel the love and the kind of a sense of family there? All of those things that we can do, there are so many things that we can do."

And that person stood in front of me, that guy, and he said, "I never thought about that." I said, "Well, that is the important thing we’ve got to think about, when you say, ‘We should do something about it.’ Yes, we all have to work together, and we can get rid of that problem in a very short period of time if we all work together." So this is why it is so important.

I was very fortunate when I came to this country, because I was a bodybuilding champion, so I didn’t have to look around much to go and volunteer, because I was asked all the time. Any champion, if you’re a golf champion, a tennis champion, a weight lifting champion, a bodybuilding champion, you get asked all the time to volunteer and to help. I remember when I first came over here, I was like a three-time Mr. Universe and Mr. World, Mr. Olympia, and I was asked by a warden from a prison, can you come in here and work with our guys? So I went. I said to myself, well, that’s great. Maybe I’ll learn something. I went in there to a prison, I started training with prisoners. I liked it so much, that I was able to reach out and do something, that I went to other prisons, and eventually I covered all the prisons in California. I had the greatest time doing that. But it made me feel I was doing something.

And then I started working with people with mental disabilities and giving back, and doing weight training with people with mental disabilities, and creating power lifting, and becoming the national coach. And all of a sudden President Bush, the first, asked me to become the Chairman of the President’s Council on Physical Fitness and Sports. And I was traveling through all 50 states with my own money, taking the plane, flying through all 50 states, and going to hundreds of schools to teach kids how to exercise and how to live well, and how to stay away from alcohol and from drugs, and how to stay on a diet, and how to educate themselves mentally and physically, and all of those kinds of things. It inspired me.

In the meantime, I met my wife, and of course Maria comes from a family that is all about public service, all about giving back and doing something for the community and something for the state and for the country. So I got inspired all over again, even though I was already so inspired, and I loved so much while I was doing my movies and my bodybuilding championships, and running the businesses, I was doing all this volunteer work. But now I was with a family that was talking from day to night all about service, public service.

You know Eunice Kennedy Shriver, she started Special Olympics because she had a sister that was mentally handicapped, and she saw the prejudice towards that sister, towards Rosemary, and she was very upset about that, that she was treated differently than she, Eunice, was treated. So she tried to figure out, what can I do about that? So she learned how to deal with her sister, how to give her enough love, enough attention, to make her feel included, to make her feel loved and that she’s part of it, and she can do anything that she wants to do.

And then she started an organization called Special Olympics, to go and help other people with mental disabilities, to get them out of the institutions and to go and create an organization that provides sports programs for people with mental disabilities. Of course the doctors all told her, "Don’t do it, this is the worst idea, because when they go and do sports they will be tripping over each other and they will be killing each other, and they go into the swimming pool and they will be drowning, and it will be disastrous. Don’t do it." Well, she didn’t listen to any of that. She kept working away to create tolerance for those people, to create love and equality, and to have them be able to go and participate in sports, and get jobs, and have dental care and medical care, and all of those kinds of things that everyone else had the right to get.

And so now, almost 40 years later, the organization is in 164 countries—in 164 countries where they are fighting for this equality for people with mental disabilities. And I, of course, now being the son-in-law, I am traveling around the world as the Ambassador of Special Olympics, because you only want to do the things that are right for your mother-in-law, believe me. So I’m having a great time with all this, but I’m just trying to show you that even if you are from a wealthy family, you can go out and you reach out and you can do something and put a lot of time aside in order to help people that need help.

And so it is with Sargent Shriver, her husband and my father-in-law, who was working under the Kennedy administration and under the Johnson administration. I mean, what a great man. He started the Peace Corps, the Job Corps, Legal Aid to the Poor, VISTA, Head Start, and all of those programs, all of them designed to help people. Now, this is extraordinary. This man talks about service, service, service, all the time, so you get inspired by that.

But you know that there are people, when you tell them those stories, they say, "Well, it’s easy for them, the Kennedys. It’s easy for them to go out and do something, because people listen to them. They have the money, they’re rich, and all this. You, Arnold, you’re a Champion; for you it’s easy too, and you have money. For Mohammed Ali it’s easy to go around and to hand out these millions of dollars to the poor people because he has millions of dollars."

Well, it is not so. Let me tell you something. Anyone and everyone can participate and reach out. Not too long ago I met this girl, Veronica Capalonga (phonetic) at Santa Monica Church, and Monsignor Torgeson introduced me to her. It’s a church I go to every week with my family, every Sunday. And he introduced me to this girl. She looked around 25 years old, which she is, and I saw that there was something wrong with her, but she had this wonderful smile on her face.

And then I found out that she actually, at the age of 6, had leukemia. And only because of a bone marrow transplant she was saved, and she was in remission for 17 years. But two years ago she was diagnosed with brain cancer. Now, you could see that she was in pain because of that. Her left side she couldn’t even operate anymore, she couldn’t function well. You could see that she had difficulties looking, and you could see that she was, like I said, in pain, and that she could barely speak.

But even with that, being diagnosed with brain cancer, she started out a website with her friends in Santa Monica City College. She started out with a website to talk to other kids that have a similar problem. And she’s communicating with them and working with them day and night, answering questions, making them know, letting them know, that there is someone else out there that has the same problem. And she’s ready to answer their questions and to work on their fears, and to work with them to be included, and to make them feel they’re loved and all of those things.

I mean, think about this woman, who is dying of brain cancer, and here she is with the little bit that she has to offer—she’s in pain and everything—and she’s reaching out and she’s helping. That is powerful. This woman is not a celebrity, this woman is not powerful, this woman doesn’t have money. She doesn’t have any of that. What she has is the will and faith in God. She talked to me about God, her faith in God and faith in people. That’s her strength, that’s her power that she has. So, as you can see, anyone and everyone can go and participate and reach out.

Let’s not forget what President Kennedy said. Let’s not ask what this country can do for us, but let us ask what we can do for this country. That is the philosophy that makes America great. Each and every one has the power to do that, so let’s think about that. Let’s think about that. What can you do in order to reach out and help somebody? That is our obligation.

Thank you very much. Thank you. (Applause)