Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA) brought his father’s Works Progress Administration card during his final speech Friday on the Senate floor.
During the speech Harkin said that government “must not be just an observant bystander to life. It must be a force for good, for lifting people up, for giving hope to the hopeless.” He then went on to describe how one of the items he’s had on his wall next to the door he went through to go out to vote or attend a committee meeting: his father’s Works Progress Administration card.
“This: It’s my father’s WPA card,” Harkin said. “It says notice to report for work on a project, WPA form 402. It is to Patrick F. Harkin, Cuming, Iowa. You’re asked to report for work as a laborer for $40.30 per month. The date is four months to the day before I was born.”
Harkin said the card was important to him “for a lot of reasons.”
“Not only for the money and the dignity of work, but it gave my father hope, the hope that tomorrow would be better than today, that our family would stay together. We had five kids and a sixth one on the way, me. And it gave him hope that his kids would have a better future.”
.@SenatorHarkin’s father’s WPA card. pic.twitter.com/3M9LosFWMF
— Jeremy Art (@cspanJeremy) December 12, 2014
Harkin has pulled out his father’s WPA card before. A recent story about Harkin’s time on the Senate started out with an anecdote of Harkin showing the card, which Roll Call described as “a prized possession.”
