It’s traditional for Governors to deliver Thanksgiving Proclamations every year. They usually include something about being thankful and a recap of the year. This year, Connecticut Governor Dannel Malloy’s message says, in part, “From a once-in-a-lifetime economic downturn, to dangerous storms, to unthinkable tragedy, we have faced challenges that no one would ever have asked for. Yet, in those darkest moments of need, I have been thankful for the tremendous grace and compassion we have shown to one another.”
This week, the earliest film of a Connecticut governor reading a Thanksgiving Proclamation was made public by the Connecticut State Library. It’s from 1938. Governor Wilbur Cross, with white hair and mustache, wearing a 3 piece suit, sits at a desk in front of his cabinet and reads from a piece of paper. And you can hear, in his careful wording, that before Cross was elected to four terms as a governor, he was a professor of English.
Click here to see and hear former Governor Wilbur Cross's 1938 Thanksgiving Proclamation.
Read more about Governor Cross's other proclamations, including the observation that his 1931 proclamation was one sentence of 176 words.
Click here to read Governor Dannel Malloy's proclamation for this year.
