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Happy Veteran’s Day! I want to thank Representative DelBene for inviting me to speak with you today and I want you to know that I am absolutely honored to be in your presence. Many people confuse Veteran’s Day and Memorial Day. While Memorial Day is a somber time of remembering our brothers and sisters in arms who made the ultimate sacrifice while fighting for our country, Veteran’s Day is a time to celebrate the dedication and service of those who lived, and continue to live lives of service to our country, our state, our communities, and our families. We have a lot to celebrate today!I’d like to start this off right by asking you to join me in a round of applause for all of our veterans.Thank you. Thank you for serving our country. I believe that we owe a special thanks to those of you who served during the Vietnam War. As a boy who was five years old to fifteen years old during your war, I was stunned and angered by the way you were treated by some of our fellow Americans. I want you to know that in my eyes, you were always our heroes, and still are today. Your example of honorable service played a major role in my decision to join the Army nearly forty years ago.My father and uncles served during WWII and Korea. I was taught at a very early age that when our country calls, you answer the call. There was no arguing about it with Uncle Sam. You packed up and shipped out. Period. My parents explained to me that we have many wonderful, rare rights by virtue of being Americans, but we also have DUTIES and responsibilities that accompany them. Protecting and serving our country when called is one of those duties. Someone must have taught you the same lesson because you chose to serve. You fulfilled your duty as an American. That choice speaks volumes about who you are and what you are made of. You are part of a rare breed of Americans. Only six percent of our people are veterans and less than one percent currently serve in the armed forces. Even though veterans are not all United States Marines, we are all certainly the few, the proud, and the brave. The fact that such a small percentage of our fellow citizens serve in the military today is a cause of concern for me. I have to wonder if we would still be fighting in Afghanistan, Iraq, and now Syria, sixteen years after the attacks of 911, if more of our elected leaders were veterans or more of our fellow citizens were directly impacted by the war. When the attacks of 911 happened sixteen years ago, my son was in the 7th grade and my daughter was a junior in high school. Both of them are now captains and combat veterans. One of the proudest moments of my life came in 2016 in the desert of Kuwait when I pinned a Bronze Star Medal on my son as he came out of Iraq after a year-long deployment.As a father, I was very proud of him for serving our country and performing well under difficult circumstances. But I was also a little sad that my generation had not been able to win decisively and that he and his sister had to go to Iraq in the first place.I took away two truths from that experience that all of you are very familiar with. First, members of the military aren’t the ones who decide whether or not to take the nation into war or how long to keep fighting. Second, it is always our nation’s youth who fights our wars, no matter how much we older veterans wish to protect them.While I was just a boy during the Vietnam War, I’m pretty sure that I would remember if all of you voted to go to war. Walter Cronkite would have reported that on the CBS evening news. But that’s not what happened. Our president decided to go to war in Vietnam and our congress voted to support his decision. Even as a boy I realized that. That’s why it made absolutely no sense for some Americans to blame you for the war. You selflessly answered the call to duty, put your lives at risk, and did your level best to protect our country. That is nothing short of being heroic and I respect you so very much for doing it.And you were young. The people that you served with were young too. And you carried an awesome amount of responsibility on your young shoulders. It’s still that way today.Even though Hollywood would have us believe that the people who fight our wars are more mature people like Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone, or Bruce Willis; larger than life superheroes who blow up everything in sight, clearly, we aren’t.The truth is that America is OUR country, yours and mine. It belongs to US and it is OUR responsibility to protect it and our young people shoulder most of that burden. Let me tell you a little story to illustrate this point.In 2005 I was on the flight ramp at McChord Air Force Base welcoming home our Washington National Guard soldiers as they returned from a very long year in Iraq where we suffered casualties and had some of our soldiers killed in action. I stood at the bottom of the stairs that the soldiers walked down as they exited the plane. I shook hands with every single one of them as they filed by and welcomed them home to cool, green Washington after their year spent in the awful deserts of Iraq and Kuwait. As a traditional Guardsman myself, it had been just one year since I was called away from my classroom at Meridian Junior High School in Kent, where I was a teacher, to do my part for the Army.It was a joyous occasion. I can’t adequately describe how wonderful it is to welcome our soldiers back from combat and quickly celebrate with each one of them the fact that they made it and are now safe. Down the stairs came a very familiar face that I had been waiting to see. Lieutenant Wright was a young, fellow teacher and coach with me at Meridian Junior High. He had a wife and two young children. I was very happy to see him coming down the stairs from the door of the plane. So there we stood on the flight ramp, two soldiers, two history teachers, two football coaches, quietly celebrating the end of a mission to protect our country. It was an amazing moment.Shortly after I shook hands with Lieutenant Wright, I found myself shaking hands with a much younger soldier who looked very familiar. He looked at me and I looked at him, both of us knowing that we knew each other, trying to place each other in the right context, trying to find the right memory. I glanced under his rifle sling at his name tag. He looked down at mine. Time seemed to slow down. Then our eyes met with sudden recognition. “Coach!”, exclaimed the young soldier. “It’s me, Quasi!” I broke all military protocol and hugged SPC Eric LeDrew tightly. There we were, two soldiers, one an old Colonel and a former football coach, the other a young Specialist and a former football player that we nick-named Quasi Moto because of the crazy hunched over stance that he had as a 7th grade linebacker. Bruce Willis, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Sylvester Stallone weren’t on that plane. They were nowhere in sight. America is, and has been, protected by US, you and me. It has been protected by Eric LeDrew, Coach Wright, by my uncles, my dad, my daughter, my son, my brother, my nieces and nephews, by you, your family members, your neighbors, and our friends. America is protected by ordinary people who choose to do extraordinary things with their lives. But we are only six percent of our people.When I was just a very young boy, President Kennedy made a now famous speech that our Vietnam Veterans are very familiar with. He called on ALL Americans to think of something bigger than themselves as individuals. He asked us to remember that though we are many individuals, we are all united by being Americans. He told us, “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.” I miss President Kennedy and the spirit of service and unity that he instilled in us. Today it seems to me that a lot of our fellow Americans have it backwards; they seem to be interested only in themselves. They exaggerate the differences between us. They demonize each other because they have a different opinion. They aren’t doing their part to keep our country strong, free, and moving forward as the great experiment in self-government that it is. Not everyone is suited to serve in the military, but I believe that President Kennedy had it right. We ALL need to serve in some way. This is OUR country. WE own it. We are ALL on the same team, the American team, and we all need to do our part, just like you, and thousands of other veterans, who now serve as teachers, community volunteers, police officers, fire fighters, parents, grandparents, and citizens who run for office to serve us, no matter what political party they belong to.We live in a very special country that many veterans have sacrificed to give us. It belongs to us. It is up to us to protect it, and it is up to us to keep it moving forward. We owe it to our veterans to ensure that our nation, state, and community continue to thrive. This is the best way to honor their service and sacrifice.Today we gather to thank and celebrate our veterans. Let’s leave here committed to serving our country by being the very best citizens that we can be. Let’s honor our veterans’ service through our own service and active, participating citizenship.In conclusion, please join me in giving our veterans, who have made our freedom possible, one more thunderous round of applause. ................
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