Fr. Gabriel Richard, only Catholic priest ever to serve in the Congress of the United fastes. richly deserves to be remembered," President Franklin D. Roosevelt wrote in a letter to James E. Frazer, chairman of the Gabriel Richard Monument Committee here.
" Gabriel Richard was one ofithose manysided men who were often the product of our pioneer period," the President said. " He was a striking. figure in American history. It was a far pilgrimage from his birth in France to his death in Detroit some sixty-odd years later. During that period he taught mathematics in Baltimore; he was sent as a missionary to the Indians in the Northwest Territory; he found time to engage in literary work and rounded off an otherwise full career by serving as delegate from Michigan Territory to the Eighteenth Congress, being the only Catholic priest ever to serve in our national legislative body."