This is the beginning of the fifteenth anniversary of The John M. Ashbrook Center for Public Affairs. As it happens, this important milestone coincides with significant additions to the Ashbrook Center’s Board of Advisors, with the appointment of a new Chairman of the Board, and with my own appointment as the new Executive Director.

As you know, the central mission of The Ashbrook Center is to educate future civic leaders of America in the moral and intellectual virtues required of self-governing citizens. I have been laboring at the Center in the service of this lofty cause for nearly ten years. I am now at once humbled and greatly energized to be asked to serve as Executive Director of the Center.

As new Director, I am deeply grateful to my predecessor Charles Parton for his years of leadership and friendship and to all the supporters of the Ashbrook Center without whom our work would be impossible. I want to take advantage of our fifteenth anniversary and of the strengthening of our Board to rededicate the Center to its mission and to instill renewed energy and purpose in everything we do.

In my view, there is no greater honor or duty for each generation of Americans than to preserve the blessings of liberty, in full strength and vigor, for our children. This is a many-sided task. One essential part of it is that we must teach our children how to be free, self-governing citizens. We must equip them with the knowledge and the character needed to govern themselves so that they may justly and wisely take care of this great country together in the future.

This, in a nutshell, is the work of the Ashbrook Center. It is a work to be proud of. And it is a work we cannot do without your support.

The Center has made great progress in fifteen years, and it has depended on your support every step of the way. We have graduated more than 110 Ashbrook Scholars. Each of you has been responsible with your support for helping to educate these fine young men and women, who have gone on to take leading parts in their professions, their communities, and their country.

I urge you to take this occasion to renew your enthusiastic support for the mission of the Center by filling out the enclosed form and contributing as much as your can to our effort. You have my personal assurance that each dollar will be spent to help to pass on the blessings of liberty to the next generation.

Join me in rededicating ourselves to this noble cause.

Sincerely yours,
Peter W. Schramm