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 PROCLAMATION 7221—SEPT. 15, 1999 113 STAT. 2141 Medicine at the National Institutes of Health. We also have sought to expand our Hispanic Education Action Plan with an additional $480 million for improving educational programs imd institutions serving high concentrations of Hispanic students. We cannot seize the enormous opportunities of the 21st century if a large percentage of our children lack the skills and knowledge they need to reach their full potential. In honor of the many contributions that Hispanic Americans have made and continue to make to our Nation and our culture, the Congress, by Public Law 100-402, has authorized and requested the President to issue annually a proclamation designating September 15 through October 15 as "National Hispanic Heritage Month." NOW, THEREFORE, I, WILLIAM J. CLINTON, President of the United States of America, do hereby proclaim September 15 through October 15, 1999, as National Hispanic Heritage Month. I call upon government officials, educators, and the people of the United States to honor this observance with appropriate ceremonies, activities, and programs, and I encourage all Americans to rededicate themselves to the pursuit of equality. IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this fourteenth day of September, in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and ninety-nine, and of the Independence of the Unitiad States of America the two hundred and twenty-fourth. • WILLIAM J. CLINTON Proclamation 7221 ofSeptemberlS, 1999 National POW/MIA Recognition Day, 1999 By the President of the United States of America A Proclamation As we look back over this century that is swiftly drawing to a close, we recognize that the light of freedom still bums brightly in our world today because of the service and sacrifice of America's men and women in uniform. Through the devastation of two world wars and the brutality of numerous regional conflicts; on jieacekeeping assignments and humanitarian missions; from the darkest days of the Cold War to the fall of the Berlin Wall, our Nation's service men and women have fought the forces of tyranny and won signal victories for liberty, human dignity, and the ideals of democracy. On every continent, on the seas, and in the air, gallant young Americans have paid for our future with their own, and many have preserved our freedom by sacrificing their own. On National POW/MIA Recognition Day, we remember with profound gratitude those who suffered captivity and ithose whose fate remains unknown. Many American POWs were tortured at the hands of their captors; all experienced the ordeal of being held against their will and the anguish of indefinite separation from their families and their homeland.

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