Political Quotes

“It is an honor to follow my friend Senator Whitehouse. You could only turn out well, my friend, with the bloodlines you have. Mr. President, I rise today really for one reason: I rise today to make crystal clear that we are profoundly grateful to every American who has answered our Nation's call to serve in uniform, to risk their lives, and in too many instances to lay down their lives so that we might remain a free people. We are profoundly grateful to their families who have sacrificed so much while their loved ones were away fighting to protect the rest of us and making this a better and more just world. We are especially indebted to those families whose loved ones left for war and never came home. It is a sacrifice that many Americans can barely imagine but one that has been all too real for millions of families since the founding of our Nation. One of those families was my mother's family. I never got to meet my mom's younger brother. His name was Bob Kidd Patton. My mom was a Patton. Bob was the youngest of five children, born near the coal- mining town of Beckley, WV, to my grandparents, Ray and Effie Mae Patton, a Gold Star mother. Bobby was killed in action on October 26, 1944, during a kamikaze attack in the Western Pacific on his aircraft carrier, the USS Suwannee. Among the bodies of the ship's crew who were never recovered was that of my Uncle Bob. On the day of that attack, he was--get this--19 years, 6 months, 23 days old.…”