Marshall Sanford: “I rise today because in many ways we are a country in search of heroes. We look back through the history pages for…”

“I rise today because in many ways we are a country in search of heroes. We look back through the history pages for heroes. We look at George Washington. We look at Patton. We look at William Wallace. We look at Colonel Joshua Chamberlain and his group of bedraggled soldiers in the battle of Gettysburg. We look at movies, where there are all kinds of different heroes that may or may not have existed, but we look at them in movies. We look around the world for heroes. In Tiananmen Square, the young student stands up in front of a tank, because he has ideas that he believes in. A young student in Moscow back in 1991 stands up in front of a tank, again because of ideas he believes in. Yet, when we look at movies and we look at history and we look at events around the world, what we oftentimes forget is that in fact, heroes live at home. Heroes live in our midst. What I want to say for just a few minutes today is that I stand here in praise of one such hero. That hero is a young 15-year-old boy by the name of Keith Putnam, who lived in Hanahan, South Carolina.”