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By Anthony J. Principi, Secretary of the Department
of Veterans Affairs
Have you thanked a veteran today?
We are blessed, as Americans, to live in a nation
gifted with rights and freedoms envied the world over. Those rights
and freedoms did not come cheaply. Have you thanked a veteran
today?
We are the beneficiaries of a struggle for independence
from which we emerged as a nation of many States joined together
as one shining Republic. Have you thanked a veteran today?
We rise every morning empowered by a land of opportunities
made rich and plentiful by a vigorous and open economic, agricultural,
and industrial marketplace. We enjoy a bounty of goods and services
unmatched in all the world. Have you thanked a veteran today?
We expand our knowledge of ourselves and the world
around us in myriad kindergartens, elementary, middle, and high
schools, and institutions of higher learning unparalleled in their
accessibility to virtually every citizen who seeks the keys to
education. Have you thanked a veteran today?
As we have just demonstrated to the world, Americans
choose the men and women who represent us in our local, state,
and national governments—from county commissioners to the
President. And any of us who seek office, or who have an opinion
about those who do, are encouraged and welcome to take to the
floor of the political arena—small or great—defining
the very essence of our unique, and enduring, Democracy. Have
you thanked a veteran today?
We constantly refill and express our creative spirits
in countless libraries, theaters, auditoriums, museums, and galleries
wherein our literary, performing, and visual arts are displayed
in all their variety, uncensored, and open to all. Have you thanked
a veteran today?
We clash on the gridirons of 10,000 stadiums; we
shoot for the hoops on countless inner-city courts and in mighty
arenas; we swing for the fences of small-town diamonds and the
walls of major league ballparks; we run, we swim, we play, we
exert ourselves individually and competitively in a nation where
we are free as men and women and boys and girls to celebrate the
independent spirit of athletics. Have you thanked a veteran today?
And we bow our heads, kneel on prayer rugs, and
lift our voices in holy songs in mighty cathedrals, elegant churches,
simple chapels, in synagogues, and in mosques all across our nation,
secure in the knowledge that our beliefs are sacred and our right
to worship in our own way—or not to worship at all—is
revered and protected. Have you thanked a veteran today?
At day’s end, we sit down to dinner, in communities
large and small, and share with our neighbors the immutable constancy
of our freedom to raise our families under liberty’s open
skies, and to fall asleep beneath the comforting blankets of our
democracy. Have you thanked a veteran today?
Today, Veterans Day, 2004, let us seize this opportunity
and offer our heartfelt ‘thank you’ to America’s
former soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines, and Coastguardsmen.
For 228 years, they protected the rich and seamless fabric of
Freedom woven on the loom of conflict, washed in the blood of
patriots, and preserved in times of peace through their fidelity
in service to the cause of Liberty.
Forty-eight million of our fellow citizens earned
our gratitude by donning our nation’s uniform. They are our
ancestors laid down in their eternal resting places. They are
the Greatest Generation. They are our mothers and fathers, our
sons and daughters, our neighbors, and our countrymen across the
nation. They are our warriors still missing in action, and they
are our former Prisoners of War finally released to Liberty’s
loving arms. And they are our Armed Forces on the front lines
of Freedom half a world away.
On this Veterans Day, we thank them all.
Editor’s Note: Secretary Principi wrote
the foregoing for Veterans Day 2004.
Anyone wishing to remember the Blinded Veterans
Association in a Last Will and Testament may do so by including
a special paragraph in their document. If your wishes are complex,
please contact BVA National Headquarters.
Anyone still wishing to contribute through the
Combined Federal Campaign may do so by using Identification Number
2155.
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