MARK H. AYERS, President
SEAN McGARVEY, Secretary-Treasurer
MICHAEL J. SULLIVAN, 1st Vice President
JOHN J. FLYNN, 2nd Vice President
DANA A. BRIGHAM, 3rd Vice President
EDWIN D. HILL, 4th Vice President
JOSEPH J. HUNT, 5th Vice President
JAMES A. GROGAN, 6th Vice President
JAMES A. WILLIAMS, 7th Vice President
NEWTON B. JONES, 8th Vice President
WILLIAM P. HITE, 9th Vice President
KINSEY M. ROBINSON, 10th Vice President
PATRICK D. FINLEY, 11th Vice President
JAMES P. HOFFA, 12th Vice President
TERENCE M. O’SULLIVAN, 13th Vice President
Building and Construction Trades Department
AMERICAN FEDERATION OF LABOR—CONGRESS OF INDUSTRIAL ORGANIZATIONS
815 SIXTEENTH ST., N.W., SUITE 600 • WASHINGTON, D.C. 20006-4104
(202) 347-1461 www.BCTD.org FAX (202) 628-0724
REMARKS
Mark H. Ayers
President
Building and Construction Trades Department, AFL-CIO
To
Veteran's Day Ceremony
The Wall
November 11, 2009
Thank you.
This is a humbling day for not only those of us assembled here at the “Wall,”…but it is a humbling day throughout America. A day when we bow our heads reverently and open our hearts and minds to all veterans living and deceased.
Especially those who lost their lives in active duty…for they made the ultimate sacrifice to serve country at all cost for all the right reasons.
We honor fallen heroes of all wars…many whose last heartbeat was in a distant land far from America’s shores. But we have the comfort of knowing that many returned to their final resting place in the Motherland…and have been eternally memorialized throughout the United States and its territories.
Whether their names are here on the “Wall” or on a small monument in a town square really doesn’t matter…but rest assured, their names are recorded somewhere…and each and every name, in its own right…stands as an eternal monument to our freedom.
Our past will always be remembered because in those names and memories we live on.
I am reminded of words written in the Old Testament…“that to everything there is a season, a time and a purpose under heaven”.
Today, our purpose under heaven is to honor our fallen and those who served the United States in military service.
In the shadow of the Washington Monument I am also reminded of George Washington’s belief…That “Every post is honorable in which a man can serve his country”. Since that time men and women have served with uncompromised loyalty, dedication and sense of noble purpose.
We are also in the shadow of the Lincoln Memorial…and its fitting to remember President Lincoln’s words which I will paraphrase…“may you always have the cherished memory of your loved one…and the solemn pride that must be yours…to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the alter of freedom.”
To my right…the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund will build the Education Center at the Wall once the necessary funding is raised. The Center will be a multi story structure built underground…to educate our youth and visitors for years to come…about the call to duty of all Americans to service.
More than one half the 4 million people who visit the Wall every year were born after the Wall was built. The Center will focus not only on the names. It will also focus on the stories and the values exemplified by courageous Americans of all wars…including Iraq and Afghanistan.
This place, this wall, has become truly hallowed ground.
More than 100,000 remembrances from the last 100 years of America’s conflicts…have been quietly and thoughtfully left here. It’s as if those who left them knew they would be taken care of.
Purple hearts from WWI, heart wrenching letters…duty rosters full of names that have been marked Killed in Action or Missing in Action…and thousands of other items too numerous to mention. Currently these remembrances are carefully and respectfully stored in a warehouse which no one sees.
The stories associated with these men and women are indeed a national treasure…one that needs to be shared with the American public.
Someday, those who visit this hallowed ground will come to know our heroes.
I also want to recognize a true Vietnam hero within our midst, Jan Scruggs…and he won’t like it that I’m doing so. Jan is a person who truly accomplished a mission impossible.
It took two decades to build the Lincoln Memorial…and nearly forty years to complete the Washington Monument. Jan, however, got America's most visited Memorial built in just three years…without using one penny of government money!
He is the founder of this remarkable Vietnam Veterans Memorial…the Wall…the VVMF…and the Education Center.
But just as importantly…he is the collector and protector of the personal items that will be displayed in the Center.
We underscore this ceremony and other ceremonies going on across the nation…with the knowledge that Veterans are people who, at one point…wrote a blank check made payable to the “The United States of America,” for an amount “up to and including their lives.”
War never really ends…but in the words of author Herman Wouk…“The beginning of the end of War lies in remembrance”. That is why we are here today.
In the words of the Revolutionary War Patriot, Nathan Hale…who said “I regret that I have but one life to give for my country”…I believe in my heart that the fallen heroes named on this wall and those of all wars would agree.
In the last verse of the most famous war poem ever written – “In Flanders Fields”…Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae of the Canadian Army wrote...Take up our quarrel with the foe: To you from failing hands we throw; The torch; be yours to hold it high. If ye break faith with us who die. We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
in Flanders fields.
I’ll close with a quote I once heard so as not to minimize the loss of a loved one in war…“To the world he was one…but to me, he was my world.”
Thank you for being here.
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