Speech by Gen. Tommy Franks Nov. 8 for “Salute to Service” at the Tommy Franks Leadership Institute and Museum, Hobart, Okla.:You honor us by being here. All of you honor us by being here. You gentlemen (motioning toward veterans) honor us by what you did.
Isn’t it amazing, one nation under God. (Members of the crowd could be heard saying amen followed by applause).
How many of you are either veterans of service or family of veterans of service or love those who served? (Everyone in the crowd raised a hand).
This is a special day for us because we get a chance to open the doors on a little interim — kind of a museum. Some of y’all who went to OU are wondering what that word means — interim. Now, all the people from Oklahoma State would be able to tell you that interim is somewhere between where you start and where you’re going. That’s what we are opening today just for you. We want you to be able to walk through there and think about where you were, when.
And think about our kids, grandkids and all the things that made this country what it is. We have more than 230 years of American history and if you were anywhere around my wife at any particular time in your life, she would have given you an education about history because she’s a history teacher. She’s been giving me an education on history for a lot of years, going on 40 of them. She has had a lot to do with what you see when you go walking through the little exhibits next door.
What a wonderful community we have here that opened their arms to an outsider and said “come on down.”
You can think back a long, long time. Think back to Lexington and Concord more than 230 years ago when Americans first stood up and said “hey, hey, hey, we’re Americans and we’re going to live in a country that’s free.”
And you can go from there to Gettysburg and Vicksburg while we were all trying to figure out as a young nation what we were ultimately going to be.
And you can go from there to remember places like the Muse and the Argonne in World War I a long time ago, when none of us were here to see it, but the fact is that these young men and women, who wore uniforms like that one standing over there (pointing to a service man in uniform) didn’t come home until it was over, over there.
Then you can go from there to Omaha Beach, Pearl Harbor, the greatest generation, and you can think about those who served. You can go to Inchon, the Frozen Chosin and think about all those who served. and you can go from there ..... pause .... and An Loc and you can go to the Highlands and the Delta and recognize that we as Americans have never done the best job we could have done, and we didn’t do what we should have done, when we should have said “welcome home” to all those who served over there a long time ago in a place called Vietnam. (Applause).
You can go from there in 1983 in Beirut, Lebanon where we lost our Marines and you can go to 1993 in a place called Mogadishu, Somalia where we left so many of our dead in the streets and didn’t even bring them home — Mogadishu, Somalia.
Then you can go from there to 1996 to Kobart Towers, Saudi Arabia and in the middle of that you can go to Desert Shield and Desert Storm in 1990 and 91 and you can go on, all the way through where we are today, with young men and women serving a long way from home in Afghanistan and Iraq, not for the purpose of celebrating war but for the purpose of guaranteeing peace and freedom, and the ability for you and me and my family and my daughter and her husband and our grandkids standing right over there (motions in the direction of his family) to be able to live in the land of the free because of the brave.
It’s time this time of year for us to recognize our veterans, recognize their families, recognize those who served, and raise our heads up and not be ashamed that we are the land of the free, home of the brave, and if you don’t believe that, just try to take it away from us.
That’s enough bawlin‘ and everything like that. I get a little emotional when I talk about this kind of stuff and when I look in the eyes of people who really and truly care about what they are doing like my son-in-law who, as we speak, serves in our military and I’m honored that you are No. 1 part of my family, and No. 2 that you are here.
So what we are fixin‘ to do is some of us are going to eat donuts over here and drink coffee and whatnot; some of us are going to go through that little trailer and see what kids at 130 schools in Oklahoma are going to see this year because what we do is we drive it up to the school grounds and kids and their teachers get a chance to go through to see things they’ve never seen before about a part of the world that’s very important to our country. And some of us will go down and go through the little museum. And I encourage you not to get in there and get in a rush. Take your time. There are some exhibits and stuff to look at but there’s lot of words and I encourage you to just slow down a little bit on this day and read some of the words and things about some of these wonderful people that serve this country.
Thanks for being here on this most magnificent day and for holding your head up and being proud to be an American. God bless all of you, and God bless America.
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