Office of Public Affairs

2005 Veterans Day Speech

Mark Kinders is the Public Affairs Director at UW-River Falls.

A native of Chicago, he served in the U.S. Marine Corps from 1968-1972. While in the Marines he was assigned to helicopter squadron operations in the Third Marine Aircraft Wing. His additional responsibilities for several years included assignment to the Presidential Security Detail for Air Force One when President Richard Nixon visited the Western White House in San Clemente, Calif.

Among his academic credentials, Mark hold a master's degree in history from UW-River Falls.

Veterans Days Speech

Thank you for the opportunity to speak today. I'm deeply honored, and humbled, to have the privilege of delivering the Veterans Day speech on our campus.

This is my 20 th year attending this important ceremony and its celebration of service. In those past years as I listened to the speakers, I often wondered what I might say that would dignify this ceremony if I were asked to speak. This is a profoundly emotion-laden event.

It is one of deepest solemnity. It is of the recital of the most important score to come from the Civil War: General Dan Butterfield's "Taps."

It is of the greatest tribute that can be paid to any American: a 21-gun salute.

Against the dignity of this ceremony, I wondered whether my message could be profound.  

Then I recalled that this is a gathering of remembrance. And so I shall remember.     

This setting on the lawn of North Hall is particularly appropriate for this ceremony as we gather to thank and to honor those from this University, our community and our nation who served and sacrificed in our Armed Forces.

In 1946, outside these very doors, a photographer took one of the most significant photos that can be found in our archives. It documented an assembly of five men and women wearing their dress uniforms.

Veterans of World War II, they had returned to the River Falls Teachers College to complete their educations or to return to the classroom. They represented the more than Eleven Hundred students, faculty, staff and alumni who put themselves in Harm's Way during what has become known as "The Good War." From Battleship Row at Pearl Harbor to the oil fields of Ploeste, from the jungles of Guadalcanal to the snow covered forests of Bastogne and the Battle of the Bulge, they shouldered the burden of freedom. They sweated, they bled, and 24 of them did not return.  

Their courage ran deep.

It was a form of courage that is threaded throughout the historical fabric of this institution. It was sewn in the Spanish American War, in World War I, Korea, Vietnam, Desert Storm, and now in Afghanistan and Iraq. Many thousands more of our faculty, staff, students and alumni have placed their lives on the line in the dangerous daily business of serving in the military in non-combat areas.

Each of those service men and women, I'm sure, had a different experience and story to tell of their time in uniform.

Certainly, there are commonalities that each generation experienced. As a young man in the Marines during the Vietnam War, I learned the nomenclature of my era. It is a verbiage that others from my generation who are here today will recall: some of it is the serious terminology of warfare, and others bear the whimsy of soldiers, sailors and Marines. Terms like C-Rations, John Waynes, LZs, I Corp, M-14s and Pogey Bait.

To many of you here today, those terms will have little meaning. Truth be told, they probably do not have much meaning to those who are in uniform with us here today, some 30 years after my own experiences. But then I, after completing Boot Camp in 1968,   recognized little of my father's and my uncles' military life from World War II.

Even so, there are many common bonds between all veterans. The deepest bond was forged among us when we stepped forward to swear an oath of allegiance to uphold the Constitution of the United States. Our reasons for doing so might have been centered around amorphous ideas like patriotism, or love of country, or an obligation to repay those who served before us. But regardless of your age or motive, there is a gravity in promising to put your life at risk for your nation that becomes immediately obvious as you raise your right hand.

With age and experience, hopefully wisdom comes, too, and with it a deeper appreciation of what it means to serve in the Armed Forces.

When I reflected about how our insights about military service mature with time, I thought of my father. When he died six years ago, he had carried with him for more than 50 years fragments of shrapnel still lodged in his body, and shards of barbed wire embedded in his eyes. They were his Red Badge of Courage: the wounds he suffered in Belgium and Germany as a 19-year-old machine gunner in the 35 th Infantry Division.

Like so many others who served in combat, my father rarely spoke about his experiences, and when he did so it was never in great detail.

What he did speak of throughout his life was the "why." And he always did so with the tremendous pride that all Veterans have from serving our country for the noblest of reasons: our freedom.

My father would often reflect on the Four Freedoms described by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1941. President Roosevelt, in his address to Congress on the State of the Union, defined them as an " unshakeable belief in the manner of life" that we live. Those freedoms are:

Freedom from want.

Freedom from fear.

Freedom of religion.

Freedom of speech.

We, at UW-River Falls, are the special beneficiaries of the sacrifices of my father and the millions of other men and women who have served under our flag throughout our history. For we at the University have the obligation to be critical thinkers, to weigh and to assess life in our Republic, and most importantly, to speak freely about our democracy, even when it may be unpopular.

That is the special obligation that our Republic has conferred upon us.

Such a profound societal mission never happened in Stalin's gulags, in Hitler's Germany, or in Saddam Hussein's Iraq. True academics are among the first to be purged in a totalitarian society whose dictates would wither under the ennobled criticism that comes from enlightened, free people.

Freedom of speech and freedom of action, I know, continues to have a profound meaning for my fellow veterans on campus. Over the years I have talked with many of them about this: veterans like Tom Weiss, Dennis Cooper, Jens Gunelson, and Rafael Conde, among others. They hold particularly dear what our nation stands for. That comes in large measure from the requirements that all veterans experienced of necessity through their military service.

When service men and women put on their uniforms they give up their birthrights as free Americans in order to protect our democracy. During World War II General George Patton repeatedly and clearly explained why this must be so in his speeches to the soldiers of the Third Army. Soldiers sacrifice their personal freedoms in the name of discipline, because it is only through discipline that the habits of their training will arise and overcome their fears in combat so as to ensure they gain victory.

And those who have voluntarily sworn away their own personal freedoms for the sake of their nation, most assuredly cherish those freedoms all the more once they are restored.

So, today is a day of remembrance and appreciation for the legacy of freedom presented as a gift to us by those who have served.

This is a beautiful day for this ceremony. And it is a bittersweet day. Before us today our flag flies at half-staff by order of Gov. Jim Doyle to honor the memory of Army Specialist Ben Smith of Hudson, who was taken from us last week in Iraq. Specialist Smith will be laid to rest today.

But it is a joyful day of celebration for our campus and our larger community as we formally welcome back in a parade today our family members, friends and neighbors in the 128th Infantry Regiment of the Wisconsin National Guard who have returned safely to us from Iraq.

There is, indeed, much to remember and to celebrate today.

In closing, to all of my colleagues from UW-River Falls, to our honored service men and women who are here today in uniform, to our comrades from American Legion Post 121 who honor us with their participation in this ceremony, thank you for allowing me the privilege of addressing you.

To my fellow Marines who are here today, and who yesterday commemorated the 230th birthday of our Corps, I offer a heartfelt Semper Fi.

Thank you all.

And God Bless America.