[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 104 (Tuesday, August 2, 1994)]
[Senate]
[Page S]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: August 2, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                       TRIBUTE TO JAMES P. CONNOR

  Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, on another August day, 50 years ago, a 
battle patrol--part of the 3d Infantry Division of the 7th Regiment, 
United States Army--landed at a place in southern France, known on that 
day and ever after as ``Red Beach.'' The advance platoon was involved 
in one of the most difficult missions of the second wave invasion of 
occupied Europe, Operation Anvil-Dragon, to clear the mined beach, and 
to destroy heavily fortified enemy positions, for the amphibious 
vehicles that would follow ashore.
  Shortly after the landing, the platoon's lieutenant and sergeant were 
killed. Command fell on the shoulders of a 25-year-old draftee, a 
graduate of St. Mary's Commercial School in his home town of 
Wilmington, DE, a leather worker by trade. In the 3 years since he had 
been drafted, he had made sergeant himself, and now, with a 36-man 
platoon that was reduced ultimately to just seven soldiers, with no 
senior or career officers, James P. Connor took command on Red Beach.
  Sergeant Connor inspired his outmanned and outgunned troops to 
continue the fight, and to believe that they could--and would--win. He 
was wounded three times, but even when he could no longer stand, 
Sergeant Connor refused medical treatment and continued to issue orders 
and to push his troops forward. He was heard to shout, ``They can hit 
me, but they can't stop me.'' The platoon of 7 reached the enemy 
position and captured 40 Germans. The beach was secured in 3 hours.
  For his uncommon valor--for his heroism--Sgt. James P. Connor 
received the Medal of Honor, one of only two citizens of our small 
State to earn that highest of all military recognitions in the 20th 
century. Sergeant Connor's citation hailed his driving spirit, by which 
he had practically carried the platoon, through mines and gunfire, to 
the successful completion of its mission.
  After his discharge from the Army in 1945, Jim Connor returned home 
to Delaware. He got married and raised a family, four sons. He started 
a new job with the Veterans Administration, where he worked until his 
retirement, helping others who had also served our Nation in uniform. 
He lived, as he had before 1941, and like so many of his neighbors and 
friends, what we too often think of as just a regular, productive, law-
abiding citizen.
  When James P. Connor died last week at the age of 75, his wife said, 
simply but profoundly, that he had been a private person. Although his 
Medal of Honor gave him opportunities--deserved opportunities--to be in 
the spotlight, Jim Connor was never comfortable there. Like so many in 
the World War II generation, he felt that he had simply done his job, 
done what he was supposed to do as an ordinary American citizen, and an 
ordinary American citizen was all he ever wanted to be.

  Mr. Connor personified the kind of character, the kind of values, 
that are incompatible with self-promotion. He was the kind of patriot 
who does not seek applause or reward, but serves out of a genuine and 
instinctive sense of duty, and with a sense of obligation to those who 
died in their own service to our Nation. He was, not only during those 
3 hours on Red Beach but for all the years of his life that followed, 
the embodiment of the lessons taught so well by his generation.
  It is the lesson that liberty and the blessings it allows cannot be 
taken for granted by those who enjoy them, that the defense of freedom 
and its integrity must always be the mission of ordinary Americans. It 
is the lesson that our best remembrance of, and highest tribute to, 
those who have served and sacrificed for us lies not in the words we 
say when the spotlight is on us, but in the lives we live every day.
  Our highest tribute is to refuse to abandon the faith in our common 
purpose that led Sergeant James P. Connor to shout, ``they can't stop 
me''; to refuse to abandon the belief in one another--the belief and 
the trust--that inspired that platoon of seven to keep fighting 
together, that made a hero out of Jim Connor, and so many other, 
ordinary Americans; to refuse to abandon the dream whose value we feel 
instinctively, the dream of America.
  Our highest tribute is to build this country and our communities, to 
build lives like that of a private and ordinary man named Jim Connor, 
whose dedication to family, friends and fellow citizens made him a hero 
every day of his life. To be worthy of such extraordinary ordinary 
citizens, who by their driving spirit carry us toward our promise as a 
people, we must continue to keep the faith in our common purpose, and 
to build the hope, the belief in one another, the dream.
  Someone once said that, ``What we have done for ourselves alone dies 
with us; what we have done for others and the world remains and is 
immortal.'' We will mourn the death of James P. Connor, for a very long 
time, but the celebration of Jim Connor's life--of what he did for us, 
and for his family and friends--will never end.
  We extend our sympathies to Mr. Connor's wife of 48 years, Elizabeth 
Chlepciak Connor, to their 4 sons, James, Donald, Jeffrey and Michael, 
to his sister, Dorothy Brown, and to the 8 grandchildren whom he no 
doubt would claim as his dearest legacy. In doing so, we honor a 
private man whose courage and character in service to us all reminded 
us that the ranks of our history's heroes are filled by ordinary 
Americans. May we always keep this Nation worthy of such citizens.

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