And now, This I Believe. A series of living philosophies presented in the hope they may help to strengthen and enrich your life. Here is Edward R. Murrow.

This I Believe. Dain J. Domich is president of the United States Junior Chamber of Congress. A native of Sacramento, California he interrupted his college work in nineteen-forty-one to join the Army as a private. After the war, discharged with the rank of captain, he went to work as a bookkeeper for the Brighton Sand and Gravel Company becoming its comptroller in eight years. His Jaycee work has taken him a quarter of a million miles throughout this country and around the world. Here now are the beliefs of Dain J. Domich.

It was a dark night as the DC-6 dipped its wings and circled the Statue of Liberty in our approach to LaGuardia Field recently. I peered out the window and studied this great monument of a free people. With its torch lifted high, it symbolized the light of faith, freedom, and the most wonderful way of life of all. I thought back forty-one years to when a young Yugoslavian immigrant, my dad, landed in this great port of New York with less than one dollar in his pocket, eager to carve out a new life. How he sent for his old country sweetheart and they were married in California and subsequently raised a large family. The proudest day of their lives was the day they raised their right hands and took the Oath of American Citizenship.

I look back to the time when the things in which I believe were crystallized for me. It was on June 12, 1953, when I took office as president of the United States Junior Chamber of Commerce. When I sat at my desk for the first time, on it were two items, a Holy Bible and an American flag. In my travels to the forty-eight states, the territories, and around the world, I carry with me in my briefcase my Bible and my small flag. My Bible reminds me that unless the Lord helped build a house, “he that build it labor in vain.” I try to keep Him in the building of my life, my home, with my five children and a wonderful wife. I talk to Him daily, asking for wisdom and guidance, patience and understanding, but above all sincerity.

I truly believe sincerity is the most basic, fundamental necessity for human personality—sincerity in my home, my work, my life, and most important with my fellow man.

As we circled that great monument to democracy, I recalled the first line of our Jaycee creed, which states: “Faith in God gives meaning and purpose to human life.” This I believe with all my heart. The power, the feeling, and sincerity of prayer is the answer to life itself. During a recent visit to Guatemala City, attending the Central American Jaycee Conference, I entered one of the many churches in the downtown area during the afternoon. It was almost empty as I kneeled in the front pew of one of the side altars.

An old Guatemalan Indian woman entered and proceeded to kneel and pray at the base of the Virgin Mother statue directly in front of me.

As I looked at her ragged but colorful costume with her wrinkled hands clutching her beads to her heart, her head lifted high and her lips moving in prayer, I noticed her bare feet. They were covered with dust from the streets and marked with scars from years of barefoot walking, but somehow they seemed to me to be the symbol of faith. With a gift of faith, she was in another world those few moments. I realized then that this same humble quality of faith is the gift which all of us can develop if we are sincere in our belief and respect of God.

As we left the Statue of Liberty at LaGuardia Field, I thought of my little flag, which serves as a daily reminder to me that the work I am doing, challenging young men to meet head-on the many problems facing America today, is for a cause. Yes, a cause of a freedom-loving people. I am convinced that our country’s strength lies in its grassroots, its people, who must never forget the philosophy upon which our founding forefathers conceived America. As the landing flaps lowered and we moved downward for our landing, I realized that the things in which I believe were my mother, my dad, my Bible, and my America.

That was the credo of Dain J. Domich of Sacramento, California, president of the United States Junior Chamber of Commerce.