Political Quotes

“Madam President, as some of our colleagues know, I am a retired Navy captain and the last Vietnam veteran serving in the U.S. Senate. Today, I want to take a couple of minutes, if I could, to share what military service has meant to my family and to me and to discuss one of the critical lessons that we should have learned with the failure to welcome home many of my generation from our service while in the Vietnam war. I come from a family who for several generations--for several generations--has sacrificed for our country and has been privileged to serve our country. My dad and Uncle Jim were chief petty officers in the Navy in World War II. My dad went on to serve a bit in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam war. My Uncle Ed was a marine who served in combat, heavy combat, in Korea. My Uncle Bob was killed in a kamikaze attack on his aircraft carrier in the Pacific at the age of 19. His body was never recovered. My grandmother was a Gold Star mother. In my family, we bleed Navy blue. My father's generation returned home to a hero's welcome at the end of World War II, but that was not the case for those of us who returned home from the Vietnam war many years later. With little fanfare, no welcome-home ceremonies, no parades, we returned to our hometowns to begin our lives anew, and we did, in some cases, with extraordinarily good fortune, and I am one of those.…”