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CNN Live Today

Americans Honor Veterans on Memorial Day

Aired May 27, 2002 - 13:32   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
CAROL LIN, CNN ANCHOR: We want to take a few minutes on this Memorial Day to learn more about the Veterans History Project. It's an effort to collect and preserve the stories of America's war veterans. And joining us right now, Congressman David Price of North Carolina and retired Army Lieutenant Delane Boyer here to explain a little bit more about the project. Good afternoon, guys. Thanks for joining us. Happy Memorial Day.

Let me start with you, Congressman. How did you get this idea for the project?

REP. DAVID PRICE (D), NORTH CAROLINA: Well, this is that has taken hold. We passed a law about 18 months ago and it was signed into law. And the Library of Congress now has taken this on, this Veterans History Project.

And nationwide, we are going to be collecting life histories, mainly taped interviews with veterans from all of our wars, but particularly paying attention to the World War II veterans who are now aging and who are dying at the rate of 1,500 a day, trying to capture their stories on tape and to engage students in interviewing these veterans and in learning their stories and learning firsthand what has been done for them. And then this will be a repository, an archive, for future generations.

LIN: Now, it is really interesting that you chose teenagers, kids, basically, to be the ones to ask the questions. Lieutenant, I'm wondering, have you had a chance to talk any of these kids? And what kinds of questions did they have?

LT. DELANE BOYER, VIETNAM VETERAN: Well, they asked questions about which war you were in. They asked questions about what we thought about the wars and what we felt about our experiences in combat, some of the profound experiences we have had.

We have talked about what we thought about the military. So there is some very good questions. And I might add, it was wonderful to have those young people do this because I think it is important not only for the veterans to have, but for these young people to fully understand the very personal experiences and very, sometimes, very emotional type of experiences.

LIN: Well, Lieutenant, I'm wondering, what are the memories that you shared that you would like to live on through these kids' testimonials at this memorial?

BOYER: Well, I retired as a lieutenant colonel from the Army, and my experiences in Vietnam area. So my thing is value of life, my own experience of spirituality, very much respect for human beings and I'm much more aware of that respect for individual human beings and my spirituality of this. And I think we all have -- our behavior and our attitude, I think, is pretty much, at least it's changed for me, from the time I was growing up.

LIN: Yes. And I think it is wonderful that you have this opportunity to share it with a different generation at a time when also the United States is fighting its own war on terror. Thank you very much, retired Army Lieutenant Delane Boyer and Congressman David Price. I'm sorry, we don't have more time to talk.

But I would like to take both of you as well as our audience to the Vietnam Veteran's Memorial in Washington, D.C., where former Senator Robert Dole, the first to donate funds to build this war memorial, is now speaking to a crowd of about 10,000 people, whose family or friends are memorialized on that wall.

(JOINED IN PROGRESS)

ROBERT DOLE, FORMER U.S. SENATOR: I remember working with Jan Scrubbs (ph) way back in the 70s when this was just an idea of his, and obviously has been the leader and he deserves our thanks and he has received our thanks. And he has done it because of his commitment, because he believes in what he does and because he believed in the effort made by many in this audience and thousands more.

But he insisted on creating this tribute in this place to these heroes. And in the years since 1982, this has become a sacred place of reflection, prayer and justifiable pride. Just as the polished granite face of this memorial reflects the sacrifice of almost 60,000 young Americans, so history has come to reflect the courage and patriotism of all our Vietnam vets.

And I'm honored to be in your company. I never thought I would have this honor. It is an honor. I thought maybe for a while I might have the honor, but in any event. A year and a half ago, I joined a slightly older group. We're called the disappearing generation these days. And we assembled on the Mall to break ground for another war memorial. Well, actually, that's not quite right. We don't build memorials to war. We build memorials to those who fight wars, to the million who wear their country's uniform and to the even greater numbers on the homefront who support them with their labor and their love.

We build memorials to offer instruction and well as inspiration. The lessons they teach as relevant at Kaison (ph) and Kandahar as Bataan and Gettysburg, Inchon or Valley Forge. And beginning with the most important lesson of war: Trust your comrades as your life depends on it, because it usually does.

And all of you learn on the battlefield. You learn that blood spilled in conflict is all the same color, whether it comes from the sons of immigrants or the grandsons of slaves. In a dangerous world, these are lessons that each generation must learn for itself. In the early years of the 20th century, my father fibbed about his age in the hopes that he might go over there in World War I.

In the wake of Pearl Harbor, I joined the Army and actually got over there. It was the children of the so-called greatest generation who went to Vietnam. There you proved yourselves every bit as great in your fidelity to freedom, even greater in a sense.

For those of us in World War II, you risked just as much as we did, but we had the political and popular support at home that you did not enjoy, which made your task even more difficult. And now it is your children who are called upon to defend civilization itself. In recent years, some have wondered how the allegedly indulgent members of generation X would stack up alongside the heroes of Midway and the Mechon (ph) River Valley.

Well, now we know. We know because of Johnny Spann, the brave CIA operative who died in the Taliban prison uprising. We know because of the heroes of Operation Anaconda. We know because of the heroes in Flight 93 in the Pentagon and the Twin Towers, where lightposts became shrines emblazoned with pictures of men and women, ordinary men and women called upon to do extraordinary things just as many of you were in this audience.

So forget about the greatest generation. We are now living with the young men and women in the greatest generation. As you look at your sons and your grandsons, you are looking at the greatest generation.

(APPLAUSE)

It's been said before here: Don't forget, we are at war. I know the media likes to call it a campaign against terror. This is a war against terror, a war we need to win. And we will win it because of the dedication of all the people represented here and all of your families and millions of others who may not be assembled somewhere today.

We were unestimated on September 11 and perhaps they underestimate us still. Perhaps they mistake a few election-year headlines for a lack of will. Now, those who want nothing more than to destroy democracy can hardly be expected to understand democracy. In a few days, it will be exactly 50 years since I stood in a rain- soaked crowd in a small Kansas town to welcome home my commanding general, who turned out to be my political and military hero. In the words of Dwight David Eisenhower, he said, "I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality and stupidity," end of quote.

On the one hand, war represents the ultimate failure of mankind, or at least a politician's and diplomat's entrusted in keeping the peace. Yet it also summons the greatest qualities of which human beings are capable: courage beyond measure, loyalty beyond words, sacrifice and ingenuity and endurance beyond imagining. That is what we reverently recognize when we build a war memorial, that and all the individual lives that have made hallowed ground out of this, democracy's front yard.

Also on the Mall, you will find monuments to great American presidents, leaders who defended and defined our country in times of crisis. They are illustrious figures in the American story, but no more so than the 58,226, soon to be 229, men and women whose names are inscribed on the honor roll behind me.

In the end is their sacrifice, their service and their blood that sanctifies them all. They are forever remembered here in the company of Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and Roosevelt. May this be a source of consolation and pride to the families who loved them, the comrades who mourn them, and the vast numbers who draw inspiration from their example. May God watch over this proud company, and God bless the United States of America.

Let me close with a poem that someone sent me a long time ago, but it has a message. It's titled "Around the Corner": Around the corner, I have a friend in this great city that has no end. Yet days go by and weeks rush on, and before I know it, a year is gone. And I never see my old friends face for life is a swift and terrible race. He knows I like him just as well, as in the day when I rang his bell and he rang mine. We were younger then, and now we are busy, tired men, tired of playing a foolish game, tired of trying to make a name. Tomorrow, I say, I'll call on Jim. But tomorrow comes and tomorrow goes and the distance between us grows and grows. Around the corner, yet miles away, here's a telegram, sir, Jim died today. And that's what we get and deserve in the end, around the corner, a vanished friend.

Now, the point of that is this. The next time you see somebody who served their country, just say, thank you. When you see a son or a daughter or a mother or a wife or a brother, just say thank you for your service. It will mean a lot to them. God bless America.

(APPLAUSE)

LIN: Former Senator Robert Dole, and the 1996 GOP nominee, as he ran for president, and the former World War II combat veteran, and also the first to make a donation of so many years ago for that memorial to be built.

Now shortly thereafter from here, three names which have already been etched the black marble, or the black granite there at the Vietnam War Memorial, will be officially dedicated. They become official when their family member at a formal ceremony here will read their name out loud as well as tell stories of the person who died in sacrifice for his country. Those three names adding up the total on that wall to 58,229.

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