Iowa as a Global Leader

Former US Ambassador to Cambodia Kenneth M. Quinn talking about former Iowa Governor Robert Ray speaking at the National Governors' Association meeting in 1979. At the meeting Governor Ray asked governors from all states to follow Iowa's lead in inviting refugees from Southeast Iowa to their states.

And I think it's not understood here. This wasn't just the governor getting up and making a point about Iowa. This was the governor of Iowa standing up and making a point about the world and for this moment here providing the world global leadership on this humanitarian issue. What does that say about Iowa? What does it say about our state? Because he did it knowing I think instinctively in his heart how Iowans would respond, how they had responded, so many people had written to him of what they had done before and he stood up and said, “We, this state, we'll take more. We can't leave these people that Ed Bradley showed to us suffering and dying like this. We have to do something. We have to do more.”