This past Tuesday there was nervous excitement as my staff and I waited for three buses of World War II veterans to arrive in Washington. As we watched them pull into the World War II Memorial and slowly depart the buses, I was overwhelmed at how long each of these individuals had waited for this day – it had been 59 years since the end of the war – and I was struck with how these folks were only a handful of the many this monument honored, and sadly, that would ever walk its grounds.

Despite traveling from all parts of Virginia’s Fourth District and most of them being over 80 years old, they asked little for themselves. They hadn’t come to be thanked, to be honored, or to be catered to. They came to remember. As I greeted them, however, I was overwhelmed with gratitude. All I could say, was “thank you.”

Despite the heat of the Washington summer sun, it was easy to forget where you were and let your mind drift back to another day. As I looked out at the crowd of white-haired veterans gathered around me, I thought about where they could have been the day they heard the news that the United States had been bombed at Pearl Harbor. Like the United States as a country, how unprepared, how terrified, they must have felt. 

Yet, bravely, they left their sweethearts and wives, their mothers and fathers, and took up arms to fight for freedom. Likewise, at a time when our nation’s machine and steel industries had been deteriorating, and when America was not a country that sought to engage itself internationally, the nation at home mobilized like never before. Sixteen million Americans were called to duty, and millions upon millions more served on the home front in war industries, factories, workshops, and in their homes. 

Together, link by link, person by person, they joined together to form a powerful chain to destroy the tyranny of Imperial Japan and the genocide of Nazi Germany, to preserve the dignity and freedom of all people, and ultimately to weave the fabric of our modern nation. Each ordinary individual joined together to perform a most extraordinary feat.

I thought about when the war ended how these veterans returned home, how they packed their uniforms in closets to gather dust and got to work raising their families and pursuing their careers. I thought of my father, a veteran of the Second World War, who married my mother, his high school sweetheart on a furlough from service. After the war, together they raised me and my brother and sister, and like many others who came back from the battlefields, by example, they taught us the value of faith and the weight of responsibility to our country. 

As my guests walked through the memorial, I watched their once youthful hands that had taken up arms and toiled in factories; they now rested reflectively against the cold marble of the memorial. In a moment the very personal sacrifices of these veterans were synergized with the real and tangible monument. 

It reminded me that I was privileged, first, to be an American, and second, to be a member of the baby boom generation having been raised by the mothers and fathers of the 'Greatest Generation'. It struck me that my generation’s successes are the harvest of the sacrifices of the preceding generation.

Those who made it home, as well as those who would never return home, redefined who we are as Americans. After the war, the GI bill created the financing for home ownership so that ordinary families were able to, for the first time, really own a piece of the rock. In 1952, President Harry Truman integrated the military in appreciation of those citizens of color who had fought two wars during World War II: the military battle, and the civil rights battle. For the first time, Americans took a significant step in rightfully giving recognition and appreciation for the military service of African Americans. 

Women's rights also grew out of the victory of World War II. The women who worked in the plants and factories aptly picked up right behind those men who had been called to service, consequently challenging the boundaries of their gender. Women answered the call of military service as well, and through the nursing corps, helped to establish a platform for themselves to be accepted in the world of employment in the way that they had never been before. 

Today, for an America that, in the wake of the September 11, has felt threatened to a degree unknown since the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the World War II Memorial is more than just a final tribute to a parting generation. It is an act of self-preservation, a way of reminding ourselves of our ability as a nation to come together in a crisis and, by extension, a way of linking ourselves with a generation that dealt successfully with years of crisis. 

Fifty-nine years later, the National World War II Memorial has become a very small way of acknowledging all that has been made possible by the sacrifices of the World War II generation. It is a small gesture of the enormous gratitude we feel and a small down payment on a debt we will never be able to repay.

As I watched tears work their way down the faces of those aging heroes, I realized they had somehow been forged together by the greatness of a moment in time few of us would ever experience. Inwardly, I felt their tears as I realized they were not just sharing memories of a youth now relegated to the pages of time, but in fact saying “good bye” to the world they saved. To each of them we say as a nation, “Thank you for a job well done!”