Greetings Family & Friends!

This year, perhaps more than any other in recent history, Veteran's Day should take on a special meaning for all Americans - not just those who served in our nation's armed forces. 

The events of September 11th forever changed the world in which we live.  No American can or should be able to look back on that day and not get a tear in their eye or feel a chill when they see the stars and stripes flying.  While military service members that day did and continue to perform today incredibly heroic actions, let us not also forget the others who showed valor the likes of which we have never seen: 

-          The firemen and police officers who rushed to the scene and helped those in need, many sacrificing their own lives in the process. 

-          The office workers who helped their friends and co-workers down dozens and dozens of flights of stairs. 

-          The steel workers who helped to search the rubble of the buildings their fathers had built. 

-          The heroes on United Flight 93 who with the simple words, "Let's roll," battled their hijackers and ultimately sacrificed their own lives to save countless others on the ground. 

-          The soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines who dragged their compatriot's bodies from the rubble of the Pentagon.

-          And thousands more who deserve mention.

To put it quite simply, I am proud to consider these, and the thousands of other heroes of the past two months, my shipmates.

 "Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty."
-- John F. Kennedy
 

As I sit here typing this message as I do every year, I think about how I can tie sacrifice, veterans, the recent history and the future together.  This year, I would like to do it by citing one of the most famous Presidential speeches ever given.  The Gettysburg Address was given by Abraham Lincoln on November 19, 1863 during the dedication of a cemetery where those who had fallen defending our nation were buried. 

As you read this, I would like everyone to imagine a very similar speech being spoken at a dedication of a memorial on the site of the World Trade Center some day in the future.  Much as this nation did during that arduous time, with God's dear grace we shall once again prevail.  This Veteran's Day, please honor not only those who have served in uniform in our nation's armed forces but honor all Americans who have sacrificed for our freedom.

The Gettysburg Address by Abraham Lincoln

"Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead who struggled here have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us--that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion--that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth."

God bless America and Amen.

"For those who fought for it, freedom has a flavor those protected by it will never know."

 Happy Veteran's Day!

               Tony