In 1865, President Lincoln stood on the East Portico of the Capitol to take the executive oath for his second term as President of the United States. As he stood to deliver his second inaugural address, he faced a country that had been bruised and battered by civil war. The war was one of the costliest and deadliest wars on American soil. It separated families, brought domestic suffering, and pitted brother against brother. There was hardly a family in the south that did not lose a loved one – a son or brother or father.

As President Lincoln gave his address, he did not know the end of the war was only weeks away. And as he addressed a war-battered nation, he made a promise that has become one of the defining characteristics of our great nation – “With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan...”

Today, our nation’s veterans who selflessly dedicated their lives in service of our nation often endured long periods of separation from loved-ones and suffered physical and emotional pain. Despite the pain many of them have suffered, if you look into their eyes, you will often see a love for their country, a strength for their families, and a courage that is indefinable.

President Lincoln’s promise to care for those who shall have borne the battle ought to be one of our greatest privileges as American citizens. Without the sacrifices of our veterans, our nation would certainly not be as we know it today. Yet, when it comes to caring for our veterans, in many ways we are sadly falling short, especially when it comes to providing quality hospital care. Veterans hospitals are three-times more overcrowded that non-veterans hospitals, and many veterans must drive long distances to reach the nearest Veterans Affairs (VA) hospital to receive care.  In fact, there are 153,000 veterans per medical center on average, compared to just 49,000 non-veterans per non-veteran medical center.

Since 2003, I have worked to change this here at home by pressing the Department of Veterans Affairs for a veterans outpatient clinic in the Fourth Congressional District. The Fourth District is home to over 85,000 veterans – a 17% veteran population – one of the most densely populated areas of veterans in the nation. However, it has not had a veterans center, outpatient clinic, or medical center. The nearest community based outpatient clinic for Fourth District veterans was located in Virginia Beach. The McGuire VA Medical Center in Richmond serves veterans in the Tricities region.

Our veterans deserve quality care, and that means having ready access to care. This week, I was happy to see those years of working with the Department of Veterans Affairs and a dream to provide better access to care for veterans become a reality as we opened the doors of the new Veterans Community Outpatient Clinic in Emporia, Virginia. The state-of-the-art clinic in Emporia will make quality healthcare much more accessible to those veterans in the Fourth District who are not near a VA hospital. The clinic will focus not only on providing primary treatment, but also on prevention of disease, early detection, and health promotion.

In addition, veterans’ outpatients clinics like the one in Emporia typically include telehealth systems that permit veterans to maintain regular contact with their doctors at regional VA hospitals through video consultation and telemetry of health data and images.  The clinics also feature a health records system that allows the clinic to review patient records that may be stored at other VA facilities across the country.

Veterans are a part of all of our lives; if not personally, then by the freedoms we enjoy every day as Americans. Our work for them is not done. Ensuring our veterans have access to quality care is just one pillar of a collective vision for our veterans.  As a country, it is our privilege to renew our commitment to "care for him who shall have borne the battle" with the care, services, and support they have been promised.

This week, the youngest generation of Americans will have filed into their elementary school classrooms to learn about September 11. They are the first Americans that will not remember firsthand the shock, horror, pain, and fear we felt on that day. They are the first Americans that will remember September 11 instead by the stories we tell. They will remember September 11 by the ceremonies we hold to honor those innocent individuals who lost their lives, and those brave individuals who gave their lives. They will remember September 11 by photos of scenes that have been burned into many of our minds. They will remember September 11 by the history books.

September 11, 2001 has been written in the history books as a day of tragedy for America. Those who lost their lives that day were heroes. Though grief and anguish may have passed, the families of those who lost their lives will always feel pain on this day. And year after year, generation after generation, we must continue to work to protect their memories.

For every year that passes, it is ever more important to share the details that were written in the pages of our nation's storybook that day. Part of our responsibility as American citizens is sharing the stories of that day to provide an opportunity to remember together and to share with younger generations so that we as a nation will never forget. We can do this by sharing not only the stories of where we were and what we felt, but by remembering the need to reduce our vulnerability to terrorism and make it a priority to protect our country to ensure that American families are safe.