Keynote Speaker, Memorial Day Ceremony

Original Post Date - May 31, 2023

I was honored to be the Keynote Speaker at the City Of Newport, Rhode Island, Memorial Day Ceremony. Below is a copy of the speech I gave.

The event was led by the American Legion Post 7. Distinguished guests included many veterans from multiple wars, the city Mayor, and the Newport Artillery Company:

Glen O. Thompson.

His friends and family called him “Bud.” More on him in a minute.

Part of what makes the United States Military great is that if you ask 100 service members and veterans why they joined, you will get 100 different answers. Why did I join? Well for me, it harkens back to small-town life and some coincidental geography. In my hometown of Elkhorn, Wisconsin, my family moved to a house on the edge of town when I was nine years old. It happened to be situated near and between the two primary cemeteries for our city of 7,000 people, so after school or during the summer I would often spend time walking through those burying grounds. It was safe. It was serene. Those cemeteries were the kinds of places where you could easily get lost in yourself, noting those who had already completed life’s journey while pondering the path of your own.

It was during one of those quiet walks one May afternoon when I came across a group of VFW and American Legion members placing flags at the gravesites of veterans for Memorial Day. I approached. I was curious. I guess in some small way the simple yet poignant ceremonialism of the whole affair struck me as inspiring. And that must have been evident to the grandfatherly veterans doing the work, because the next thing I knew one of them was asking me if I wanted to help. I didn’t hesitate.

For the next few years I was a regular! I’d make frequent walks in those cemeteries after school starting in mid-May, waiting for the VFW and Legion members to arrive, always welcomed to help when they did. In the process I started to notice and memorize the names of some of the more prominent flag-bearing headstones, which tended to be those of the local townsfolk who were Killed in Action while serving their country.

One of those names I never forgot. Glen O. “Bud” Thompson. His grave marker noted that he was killed in action over France in 1944. It turns out that heroes come from everywhere in America. Even tiny rural farm towns in Wisconsin.

Outside of the limited information on the grave marker, I didn’t know much about Bud Thompson. That was, until a few years ago when I joined a Facebook group called “Elkhorn Roots,” a place where Elkhorn’s current residents and “alumni” like myself could keep tabs on our hometown and talk about its history. By chance, someone posted a newspaper clipping from the early 1980s documenting a trip that Esther Thompson, Bud’s mother, made to the French hamlet of Ferrières-en-Gâtinais (FAIR-E- AIR EN GAT-IN-A) to visit the site of her son’s ultimate sacrifice. The locals had long ago erected a monument there with the names of the crew of the B-24 Liberator that Bud had been co-piloting. She was moved to tears—not so much by the site or the monument itself, but by the evident recognition of the people of France. It was recognition made in gratitude for the sacrifice of these great American heroes in the fight to liberate a country not even their own from Nazi German tyranny.

Along with the story about the visit and the monument came a brief accounting of Bud’s final mission: Born in 1918, he served in the U.S. Army Air Corps as a Second Lieutenant in the 850th Bomber Squadron, 490th Bomber Group Heavy. His B-24 took off from Harrington, UK, at 2306 on June 18th, 1944 bound for an ammunition drop in support of the French Resistance. The plane crashed due to unknown circumstances 84 minutes later.

That account from the newspaper clipping alone would have been inspiring enough.

But even more impressive was the social media commentary that followed it, where a poster graced us with yet another newspaper clipping about Bud Thompson, this one from way back in 1939. The text revealed that Bud had been a standout athlete while at Elkhorn High School through 1937, particularly as a pitcher on the baseball team where the right-hander compiled a 19-3 record. This was enough to capture the attention of the St. Louis Cardinals, who had just signed him to one of their minor league farm clubs. He played professional baseball until he joined the U.S. Army during World War II. Whether he would have ascended to the Major Leagues we will never know. What we do know is that he put what was likely a boyhood dream aside in order to answer the call of duty to his country.

My daughter, Lillian, who is with us here today, has a third cousin from Arizona named Nolan Gorman. Any of you who follow baseball may recognize the name, as Nolan is a second year player and a rising star for, of all teams, the St. Louis Cardinals. This year he’s sporting a .281 batting average as a Designated Hitter and 2nd Baseman, and rumors are that the Cardinals are considering offering him a multi-year contract extension that would likely be valued at well over $100 Million Dollars. As a lifelong fan of the Cardinals’ divisional rival Milwaukee Brewers, I AM NOT AT ALL HAPPY TO REPORT THIS TO YOU! In fact, by now you may be wondering why I’m reporting this to you at all, considering you probably didn’t come here for a sports report. But here’s the point. If not for heroes like Bud Thompson, who gave up their baseball dreams to travel to Europe to fight against tyranny and oppression, Nolan Gorman likely would not have had the freedom to pursue his, nor the free market economy to translate his talent and hard work into a lucrative career.

Freedom is not free. It is worth fighting for. Nolan Gorman knows that. Deep down inside we all know that. And though we may not all serve or have served, we all must honor those who do and have, and particularly those in American history who have laid down their lives so that those who follow them would have the continued opportunity to experience the American dream. So thank you, Bud Thompson. Nearly 80 years later, your sacrifice is still not forgotten, and your service remains not in vain.

Now our attention must turn to the future, and I must preface my conclusion by noting that the views that follow are exclusively my own and do not represent the position of the Department of the Navy or the Department of Defense. Gone are the days since the collapse of the Soviet Union when America enjoyed almost three decades as the singular major superpower in the world. A resurgent Russia has invaded Ukraine and is

challenging NATO. Farther east The Peoples Republic of China now fields the largest Navy in the world and is threatening a nearby democracy that produces over 90% of the world’s most advanced semiconductors. Most of us don’t want a repeat of the Cold War or to pay $5,000 for our smartphones, so it’s fair to assume that the United States could become involved in a major conflict within the next decade in defense of the rules-based world order that has promoted fair market economics for the last 75 years! This is not something we would sit on the sidelines for. Our national interests, our way of life, and our freedom all stand the chance to be generationally challenged for the first time since the Cuban Missile Crisis. Are we up to the task? Are we prepared to accept the casualties of war in exchange for a just cause? If past is prologue, I’d note that Bud Thompson was ready, and he was just an ordinary baseball player from a small town in Wisconsin.

The United States of America is a wonderful country to be a citizen of. Our incredible freedoms are paralleled in few other places on earth. This is why I choose to serve a nation still worth serving. This is why I choose to defend a flag that is still worth defending. And this is why I will always accept, if called upon, that my life is still worth giving.