Wilbur L. Cross, a Yale literature professor, served as the jury chair for the first quarter century of the Pulitzer Prize in poetry. During eight of those years he was governor of Connecticut. One lasting contribution he made from the governor’s office was, of all things, a Thanksgiving proclamation.
Wilbur L. Cross
He issued it in 1936, 80 years ago. On its golden anniversary Bernard J. Malahan, a reporter for the Christian Science Monitor, hailed the proclamation. As a rule, gubernatorial proclamations are little read and quickly forgotten, Malahan wrote, but Cross had produced “an enduring work of literature.”
So, on this Thanksgiving Day, allow us to perpetuate its renown:
A proclamation
Time out of mind at this turn of the seasons when the hardy oak leaves rustle in the wind and the frost gives a tang to the air and the dusk falls early and the friendly evenings lengthen under the heel of Orion, it has seemed good to our people to join together in praising the Creator and Preserver, who has brought us by a way that we did not know to the end of another year.
In observance of this custom, I appoint Thursday, the twenty-sixth of November, as a day of public thanksgiving for the blessings that have been our common lot and have placed our beloved state with the favored regions of earth for all the creature comforts: the yield of the soil that has fed us and the richer yield from labor of every kind that has sustained our lives — and for all those things, as dear as breath to the body, that quicken man's faith in his manhood, that nourish and strengthen his spirit to do the great work still before him: for the brotherly word and act; for honor held above price; for steadfast courage and zeal in the long, long search after truth; for liberty and for justice freely granted by each to his fellow and so as freely enjoyed; and for the crowning glory and mercy of peace upon our land; — that we may humbly take heart of these blessings as we gather once again with solemn and festive rites to keep our Harvest Home.