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OBV. AWARD OF CONGRESS TO ALBEN W. BARKLEY. Aug. 12, 1949. Bust of the Vice President.

REV. IN RECOGNITION OF DISTINGUISHED PUBLIC SERVICE. An eagle in flight, holding in its talons the olive branch of peace.

By Beatrice Fenton.

This is the first medal of a Vice President of the United States to be produced by the U.S. Mint. The jury which selected the design from a number of entries consisted of the President of the United States, the Chief Justice, the Speaker of the House of Representatives and the Majority Leader of the Senate.

In reporting favorably upon the resolution to award a gold medal to Vice President Barkley, Senator Maybank of the Senate Committee on Banking and Currency remarked:

"No medal could ever capture the humane spirit, the devotion to duty, and the sense of humor shown by the Honorable Alben W. Barkley in his long period of public service. The problems he has encountered in his brilliant career as a servant of the people have run the gamut of depression, war, and inflation. Yet, unpleasant as the task might have been, he always willingly shouldered the burdens of legislative action required to meet the grave national problems which arose. He is ever to be found in the vanguard of those fighting for the advancement of the great mass of citizens of the Nation which he so capably

serves.

"His understanding of the problems of these people and his fearlessness in presenting their cause has won him the

SERVICE

admiration and love not only of those who agree with his doctrines but even of those who hold differing views. "The American people can never repay Alben Barkley for his extended, continuous, and meritorious service to the Nation. Yet, in heartfelt appreciation for public service so nobly performed over such a long span of years, a grateful populace as with a single voice urges recognition of that fact by providing for the striking of an ap propriate medal as a token of their esteem."

Alben William Barkley was born in 1877 in Graves County, Ky. Son of a poor tobacco farmer, he graduated from Marvin College, Clinton, Ky.; attended Emory College, Oxford, Ga., and the University of Virginia Law School at Charlottesville, Va. After his admission to the bar in 1901, he commenced practice in Paducah, Ky., became a prosecuting attorney and later judge of McCracken County Court. He was first elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1912 where he served until entering the U.S. Senate in 1927. He served as Democratic majority leader of the Senate from 1937 to 1947 where he spearheaded the legislative programs of Presidents Roosevelt and Truman. Elected Vice President of the United States with President Harry S. Truman in 1948, he was inaugurated January 20, 1949. During his tenure the responsibilities of the Vice President were extended to include participation in the National Security Council as well as counseling to the President on foreign and domestic affairs. After leaving the Vice Presidency in 1953, Barkley regained his Senate seat in the following year's elections. He died suddenly in 1956 in Lexington, Va.

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OBV. Portrait of Doctor Salk

REV. An allegorical figure, with the aid of a shield bearing a caduceus, protecting two healthy children from the dread disease of infantile paralysis. Around the border: AWARD OF CONGRESS TO DOCTOR JONAS E. SALK IN RECOGNITION AND APPRECIATION OF HIS ACHIEVEMENT IN DEVELOPING A VACCINE FOR

POLIO.

By Gilroy Roberts.

By joint resolution of the Congress, approved August 9, 1955, a gold medal was awarded "in recognition of the great achievement of Doctor Jonas E. Salk in the field of medicine by his discovery of a serum for the prevention of poliomyelitis."

Dr. Salk first entered the fight against polio in 1942 when he joined the staff of the University of Michigan as the recipient of a National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis fellowship. In 1951 he began his direct research at the virus research laboratories at the University of Pittsburgh on a polio vaccine.

The vaccine developed by Dr. Salk was the result of a painstaking and intensive research program. Live polio virus was treated by chemicals so that a delicate balance

was struck in which the ability of the virus to cause disease was eliminated by meticulously calculated chemical additions but still leaving the virus with sufficient potency to stimulate antibody production.

In his tests at Pittsburgh, Dr. Salk proved that the vaccine which he produced was able to raise the antibody level. In the nationwide field trial held by the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis held in 1954, Dr. Salk's vaccine was proved highly effective in preventing paralysis. Over 1.8 million children throughout the United States took part in this massive trial.

Dr. Salk was born in New York in 1914. After graduating from the College of the City of New York in 1934, he entered the College of Medicine, New York University where he was awarded an M.D. degree in 1939. From 1942 to 1947, he served at the University of Michigan, first as a research fellow and later as associate professor of epidemiology. During this period he also worked for the Army under his teacher, Dr. Thomas Francis, Jr., in an endeavor to develop a vaccine against influenza. In 1947 Dr. Salk became associated with the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, first as a research professor of bacteriology and head of the Virus Research Laboratory, and later as professor of medicine.

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OBV. ROBERT FROST. Bust of Mr. Frost.

REV. Around the border: IN THE NAME OF CON-
OGRESS TO ROBERT FROST IN RECOGNITION OF
HIS POETRY WHICH HAS ENRICHED THE CUL-
TURE OF THE UNITED STATES AND THE PHILOS-
OPHY OF THE WORLD.

THE GIFT OUTRIGHT

The land was ours

Before we were the land's.

She was our land more than a hundred years
Before we were her people.

She was ours in Massachusetts, in Virginia.
But we were England's-still colonials.
Possessing what we still were unpossessed by.
Possessed by what we now no more possess.
Something we were withholding made us weak

Until we found out that it was ourselves we were with-
holding from our land of living.

And forthwith found salvation in surrender.
Such as we were we gave ourselves outright.
(The deed of gift was many deeds of war)
To the land vaguely realizing westward.
But still unstoried, artless, unenhanced.
Such as she was,

Such as she would become.

By Engelhardus von Hebel.

On September 13, 1960, the Congress authorized the presentation of a gold medal to Robert Frost "in recognition of his poetry, which has enriched the culture of the United

CHED THE CULTURE OF THE UNITED STATES AND THE F

States and the philosophy of the world." Bronze copies of
this medal were authorized for reproduction by the act
of May 25, 1961.

Robert Frost was born in San Francisco, Calif., on
March 26, 1874. After his father's death in 1895, Frost's
family moved to Salem, N.H. Frost graduated from Law-
rence High School in 1892 as valedictorian and class poet.
He enrolled at Dartmouth College but left early in his
freshman year. During the next 2 or 3 years he worked
in mills in Lawrence, tried newspaper reporting, taught
school and wrote some poetry. In 1895 he married Elinor
White and for more than 2 years helped his mother man-
age a small private school in Lawrence. In 1897 he en-
rolled as a special student at Harvard, planning to qualify
for college teaching and continued his studies there until
1899, when he made up his mind to abandon the academic
career and establish himself in the business of raising hens
and selling eggs.

In 1900 Frost moved to a farm in Derry, N.H., where
he continued poultry farming, with ill success, until 1909.
From 1906 to 1911 he taught English at Pinkerton Acad-
emy, in Derry, and for the academic year 1911-12 he
was teacher of psychology at the State Normal School,
Plymouth, N.H. In 1912 he decided to stake his future on
his poetry, rather than on farming or teaching, and took
his wife and four children to England. There he rented a
house in Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire, where they lived
until their return to the United States, early in 1915.
It was during his English stay that Robert Frost achieved
his first success, and laid the foundations for his lasting
fame, in poetry. His first book of poems, "A Boy's Will"

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