[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 65 (Friday, May 10, 1996)]
[House]
[Pages H4886-H4889]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




  PRESIDENT REAGAN COMMANDS US--REMEMBER OUR HEROES, REMEMBER OUR PAST

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of May 
12, 1995, the gentleman from California [Mr. Dornan] is recognized for 
60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. DORNAN. Mr. Speaker, today is my, one of my brother's birthdays, 
May 10. He has two sons out of five

[[Page H4887]]

sons currently on active duty. One is an intelligence officer with the 
Forth Fighter Wing, one of the world's greatest fighter wings flying 
the F-15E Strike Eagle. He is their intelligence officer, just back 
from Saudi Arabia for the second time.
  The other son is over in the Pentagon, Don, Jr., the other one is 
Matthew. Another name, MacArthur, after General MacArthur. And the 
older brother of the two is Don Dornan, Jr., a lieutenant commander 
over in the Pentagon. Important job over there. Had over 30, 35 
missions in the Gulf as an AWACS controller on an E-2 Hawkeye with the 
Sundowners.
  Mr. Speaker, this is the 51st anniversary plus 2 days of the end of 
the war in Europe, the great crusade, as General, soon-to-be-President, 
Eisenhower said, that began with some commando raids across the beaches 
of Hitler's Fortress Europe and then, with the great Normandy invasion, 
proceeded inland and with amazing speed and great loss of life on all 
sides brought freedom to Europe. And 99 days later in the mid of 
August, 1945, the Japanese warlords conceded defeat and we had a cease-
fire with a total, unconditional surrender of all of the Axis forces on 
the deck of the U.S.S. Missouri. Clinton had the wrong end of the ship 
when he talked about it on the anniversary in Hawaii.

                              {time}  1445

  But I grew up, as did my older brother, Don, and my younger brother, 
Dick, who is a high school teacher for 30 years, in what President 
Reagan called ``a very different America than today.'' In a 1-minute 
speech a little while ago I said that I was going to pay tribute to a 
living legend in the United States Navy, 55 years on active duty. He 
only retired in 1989. I had the honor of spending some wonderful 
moments with him at Normandy, which I spoke about on this House floor. 
Adm. John D. Bulkeley told me to go out into the beautiful Coeur de Vie 
Sur Mer Cemetery on the bluffs above bloody Omaha Beach. Those bluffs 
were themselves drenched in the blood of our young Americans as they 
fought their way over the edge of the cliffs and across the fields of 
France into the hedgerows of Normandy. And Admiral Bulkeley, who passed 
on a few weeks ago, told me, ``Go out and find the graves, Congressman, 
of the Roosevelt brothers, young Quentin, who died at 20 in World War 
I, when his airplane was shot down, and his older brother, who died 26 
years later, winning the Medal of Honor on D-day plus 36, won the Medal 
of Honor for his courage and intrepidity on D-day itself and a few days 
following, and he died with his enlisted men in their chow line on D-
Day plus 36, Teddy Roosevelt, Jr.'' Also, two sons on active duty out 
of five sons, like my older brother, Don.

  And, if you are watching, happy birthday, Don.
  This gentleman, called the Seawolf, will consume most of my 1-hour 
special order today, a tribute to Admiral Bulkeley, Medal of Honor 
winner, Distinguished Service Cross holder, Navy Cross holder, Purple 
Hearts and every decoration that a warrior could ever get from not just 
his own beloved naval service but from the other services, including 
the then Army Air Corps, Air Force, Air Corps when they only had 6 PT 
boats in the Philippines and 6 beat-up P-40 fighters.
  Now I want to do a prologue to Admiral Bulkeley. Out of the mouth of 
one of my heroes as a President, modern hero Ronald Reagan, to set this 
up, I understand with some good fortune, certainly by videotape, Mr. 
Speaker, that Admiral Bulkeley's older son, John Jr., may be watching, 
a great organist, played the organ at his father's funeral, that his 
next son, Peter, may be watching, who is an active-duty Navy captain, 
also assigned to the Pentagon, like my nephew, Don, and that the three 
wonderful sisters may be watching: the oldest, Joan, I got to know at 
Normandy, was with her dad; the other two sisters I got to know at 
their dad's beautiful funeral and reception a week ago last Friday.
  I want to do this tribute to him because President Reagan told me to 
do this. He did not tell me specifically about Admiral Bulkeley, but he 
told me to do it specifically about Jimmy Doolittle, another flag 
officer, three-star general, and I did it, and I did more than one for 
General Doolittle, and I had the honor of knowing him personally.
  As I laid in ambush once in the lobby of the Waldorf Astoria Hotel, 
where General MacArthur lived out his last years, and had the 
opportunity of approaching him slowly and respectfully so that no 
Secret Service, whatever protection he had, and I did not see any, 
would think it was someone making an unkind advance on him or had the 
honor of shaking his hand. I had the honor of going to his funeral, 
going down in April of 1964 to the then brandnew Douglas MacArthur 
Museum down in Norfolk, the old city hall building. It was the only 
town that that Army brat, son of another Medal of Honor winner, General 
Arthur MacArthur, could figure out was his hometown.
  His father, a Medal of Honor winner, Douglas MacArthur a Medal of 
Honor winner, Admiral Bulkeley, a Medal of Honor winner. When I went to 
Admiral Bulkeley's funeral, I sat next to two Medal of Honor winners. I 
am going to do a tribute to them, tribute to both of them, from the 
Vietnam war, one Army, one Marine.
  Remember that President Harry Truman, served many years in the 
Senate, said he would rather have the Medal of Honor than be President 
of the United States.
  So here is the prologue, why I am doing this tribute to John 
Bulkeley, who at one time was called the wild man of the Philippines, 
and for his family and my family and for another special person 
watching who works with us here on the Hill. Mr. Speaker, our colleague 
from Florida, Clay Shaw, has working for him as one of his legislative 
assistants the son of one of the six PT boat skippers that were under 
Lieutenant John Bulkeley. He was the squadron commander, a reduced 
squadron of only six PT boats (and most people only know about PT boats 
from John F. Kennedy's Navy cross incident, where he was hit in the 
middle of the night by a Japanese destroyer, never even knew what hit 
him) a crew of 13, an enlarged crew, two men were killed.

  Kennedy was never proud of losing his boat on his very first mission, 
almost his only mission, but he certainly performed heroically as a 
good swimmer to save one of the men who was unconscious and badly 
burned.
  But that is what most Americans know about PT boats. They do not know 
about heroes in Manila or off the Normandy coast or along the New 
Guinea northern coast, or up in the straits at the battle of Leyte 
Gulf. They know nothing about the PT boat commanders who had hundreds 
of missions, lost boats and did not have a severe back injury like 
Kennedy, who were able to come back.
  But here on this Hill, which shows how closely connected to history 
we are, is the son, George Cox Jr., of the commander of the actual PT 
boat that took MacArthur off Corregidor. For the man who was actually 
at the helm, it was his boat, Ensign George Cox, not too young an 
ensign, about 25 or 26 years old. Had George Jr., the third brother 
like my family, three brothers, late in life, (lucky guy to have a son 
that young when he passed on a few years ago) but George Cox, Jr. 
serves on this Hill, and his dad was the skipper of PT-41, with the 
squadron commander, Admiral Bulkeley, Medal of Honor winner. Of course, 
George's dad, George Cox Sr., got the Navy Cross. They got and 
attempted to give him a Medal of Honor, too, along with his squadron 
commander.
  Now, here is how Ronald Reagan told me and all of us to do this type 
of tribute on the House floor. And I would hope that you are a school 
child and you are having a bowl of cereal at 3 o'clock, or you are home 
early, or sick if it is in Chicago or two o'clock, or Denver and one 
o'clock in the afternoon; in L.A., it is coming up on noon. Some people 
may be home for lunch, particularly schoolchildren. Stay with me here 
for a minute. I may even bring tears to your eyes. I know I choke 
myself up every time I read Reagan's words. If you are out in Hawaii, 
it is only 10 o'clock in the morning. Be a few minutes late for work. 
President Reagan would tell you to stay. He would tell me to order you 
to stay and listen to this tribute.
  Here is one of the best speeches I have ever heard in my life by 
anybody, right up there with John F. Kennedy's stirring January 20, 
1961, speech. Reagan's is a winter speech, January 11,

[[Page H4888]]

1989; so that is 28 years after Kennedy. It was Reagan's farewell 
address to the Nation. It is what I call the ``Freedom Man'' speech 
because in his opening paragraphs he talked beautifully about American 
ships rescuing pathetic boat people who we had deserted in this 
struggle for freedom in Indochina. Talked about a carrier up on the 
Midway, one of the lower decks, and a man on the choppy seas spying 
this one sailor on the decks staring down at him. He stood up and 
pointed to the sailor. In broken English he said, ``Hello, American 
sailor. Hello, freedom man.''
  So that is why I call it the ``Freedom Man'' speech.
  Reagan says in the early moments of this speech, delivered 9 days 
before George Bush's inaugural speech, he first talked about the 
economy a little bit, says that a lot of his ideas were called 
``radical,'' and he said that they were sometimes called dangerous, but 
he feels they were desperately needed, and then I start quoting Reagan 
directly. He says:

       In all of that time I want a nickname.

  Over those 8 years, he means.

     The great communicator. But I never thought it was my style 
     or the words I used that made a difference. I believe it was 
     the content. I was not a great communicator. But I 
     communicated great things, and they did not spring full-blown 
     from my brow. They came from the heart of a great Nation, 
     from our experience, our wisdom, our belief in the 
     principles that have guided us for over two centuries. 
     They called it the Reagan revolution. Well, I will accept 
     that. But for me it always seemed more like the great 
     discovery, a rediscovery of our values and our common 
     sense.

  It just keeps getting better, page after page. I was glued to the TV. 
You did not have to be Irish on both sides like me to shed tears. And I 
still, being an Irishman, choke myself up when I read his close, and I 
learned a lesson a few tragic months ago, back in November, from a 
little 17-year-old child.
  There is a lot of young people in the gallery now, and I will pass on 
this advice to them, Mr. Speaker, from young Noah, the granddaughter of 
the assassinated, the martyred, Jacob Yitzhak Rabin of Israel. When I 
watch her delivering a eulogy in front of many leaders of the world, 
including Mr. Clinton, on the evening news, and forgot about all the 
trained politicians and eloquent speakers, and the news focused on 
young Noah, freckle face, going into the service, wearing the uniform 
where her dad had been the commander and then the minister of defense, 
prime minister, president, everything. I watched her at the funeral 
looking at her grandfather's grave, fighting back tears, breaking down 
crying. I watched this 17-year-old. I thought of my 10 grandchildren. 
The oldest is 15, almost 15. I knew that some of them could not do 
this. I said how is she going to get through this? And she taught this 
old communicator a trick. Every time she choked herself up, she would 
stop and take a big, quick, deep breath, and then she was able to go 
right on.
  So I am going to follow that example of young 17-year-old Noah, 
because this always chokes me up.
  President Reagan said in his final message to the American people, 
those of us who are over 35 or so years of age and who grew up in a 
different America. We were taught very directly what it means to be an 
American, and we absorbed, almost in the air, a love of country and an 
appreciation of its institutions. If you did not get these things from 
your family, you got them from the neighborhood, or from the father 
down the street who fought in Korea. And, Mr. Speaker, a week ago this 
afternoon I was up at the University of Maryland, where they have given 
a huge piece of their beautiful real estate to the National Archives, 
the extension of our great Archives Building on Constitution Avenue, 
and I looked at film for hours of captured young American men, some of 
them boys, from Korea in 1950 and 1951, a terrible forgotten war with a 
beautiful memorial down near the Lincoln Memorial, a war where we left 
thousands of unaccounted-for men and 389 men known alive.
  God bless Ronald Reagan in his final words for talking about that 
father down the street who fought or maybe disappeared or was left 
behind alive in vicious communist captivity in Korea.

                              {time}  1500

  Reagan continues: ``Or the family who lost someone at Anzio, where we 
were trapped in 1944 and could not break out in that rough Italian 
winter of 1943-1944. Or you could get a sense of patriotism from 
school, or if all else failed, you could get a sense of patriotism from 
popular culture. The movies celebrated democratic values and implicitly 
reinforced the idea that America was special.'' Early TV was like that, 
too, up through the mid 1960's, the beginning of the so-called sexual 
revolution.
  More great paragraphs I have to skip over. Young students must get 
this speech. They must read it slowly in its fulsome patriotic impact.
  I jump forward. President Reagan says: ``So we've got to teach 
history based not on what is in fashion, but on what is important: why 
the pilgrims came here, who Jimmy Doolittle was.'' There is his order 
to me to do a tribute to General Jimmy Doolittle. And who knows ``30 
Seconds Over Tokyo''? How many young people in the gallery tonight, Mr. 
Speaker, know what ``30 Seconds over Tokyo'' means, unless they saw 
Spencer Tracy and Van Johnson on the late show last night or last year?
  ``You know,'' Reagan continues, ``4 years ago, on the 40th 
anniversary of D-Day'', and we are coming up soon on the 52d 
anniversary, ``I read a letter from a young woman writing to her late 
father, who had fought on Omaha Beach,'' bloody Omaha. ``Her name was 
Lisa Zanatta Henn.'' She said, and this is Reagan quoting Lisa, ``We 
will always remember Dad. We will never forget what the boys,'' men, 
``of Normandy did.'' That includes John Bulkeley, Commander than. ``We 
will never forget what the men of Normandy did.''
  ``Well,'' President Reagan continues, ``Let's help her keep her word. 
If we forget what they did, what we did, we won't know who we are. I'm 
warning of an eradication of the American memory that could result 
ultimately in an erosion of the American spirit.'' Hear President 
Reagan's words, Mr. Speaker, an erosion of the American spirit.
  I have before me the remarks of Billy Graham in the Rotunda when this 
Congress, House and Senate, in joint resolution, gave him the 
Congressional Gold Medal. In his speech on the second page, and it is 
in today's Record for May 9, yesterday, I put it in the Record, read 
Billy Graham's speech. It should be taught in every school. On page 2 
he says, ``We are a society poised on the brink of self-destruction.'' 
That is the Reverend Billy Graham, who has given half a century to 
spreading the word of our Savior, the Son of Man.
  We are poised on the brink of self-destruction. Mr. Speaker, you and 
I know he is not talking about the gas tax, whether to repeal it or 
not, or how many B-2 spirit bombers we are going to build. He is 
talking about the social issues that we will be discussing on the 
defense authorization bill next Wednesday. He is talking about what 
this era is doing to these children up here in the gallery, tearing 
their innocence away from them. Read Billy Graham's words and weep.
  I come back to Reagan: ``An erosion of the American spirit. Let's 
start with some basics: more attention to American history and a 
greater emphasis on civic ritual. Let me offer lesson No. 1 about our 
America: All great change in America begins at the dinner table.''
  Or the luncheon table in Hawaii or California, at this moment. ``So 
tomorrow night in the kitchen, I hope the talking begins. And children, 
if your parents haven't been teaching you what it means to be an 
American, let them know, and nail them on it. That would be a very 
American thing to do.''
  There are orders from the ``Great Communicator'' for you young people 
to tell your parents to teach you about American history and what makes 
this great nation different than any other Nation extant now or in the 
history of mankind.
  ``That is about all I have to say tonight,'' Reagan says, ``except 
for one thing. The past few days when I have been at that window 
upstairs, I thought a bit of that shining city upon a hill,'' the 
phrase from John Winthrop, first Governor of Massachusetts, his son 
first Governor of Connecticut.
  Winthrop wrote to describe the America he imagined. What he imagined 
was important because he was an early pilgrim, an early freedom man. He 
journeyed here on what today we

[[Page H4889]]

would call a little wooden boat, kind of like a PT boat. Like the other 
pilgrims, he was looking for a home that would be free. ``I've spoken 
of the shining city all my political life, but I don't know if I ever 
quite communicated what I saw when I said it. In my mind, it was a 
tall, proud city, built on rocks stronger than the oceans, windswept, 
God-blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and 
peace, a city with free ports,'' I wish all our presidential candidates 
had remembered this, ``that hummed with commerce and creativity. And if 
there have to be city walls, the walls had doors, and the doors were 
open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here. That is how I 
saw it, and see it still.''
  Out of respect to Admiral Bulkeley, I must jump forward to the close, 
and skip over more powerful, moving words. Ronald Reagan says, ``We 
have done our part. As I walk off into the city streets,'' to fight a 
tough disease, he didn't say that, I did, ``a final word to the men and 
women of the Reagan revolution, the men and women across America who 
for 8 years did the work that brought America back.'' Admiral Bulkeley 
told me he heard one of my special orders talking about this. I hope he 
is watching from heaven.
  ``My friends,'' Reagan says, ``we did it. We weren't just marking 
time. We made a difference. We made the city stronger. We made the city 
freer. We left her in good hands,'' and he meant Navy carrier attack 
pilot with 58 combat missions at 20 years of age, George Bush; we left 
it in good hands. ``All in all, not bad. Not bad at all.''
  Well, you can tell Dutch Reagan, Mr. Speaker, we are blowing it here. 
We are blowing the Reagan revolution, because we are not listening to 
Billy Graham. Not everything is the bottom line. I am tired of 
Republicans turning on one another and forgetting the legacy that we 
have here in Reagan and Bush, bringing this city back to a city of 
honor and character, character like Jimmy Doolittle and John Bulkeley.
  I said to Admiral Bulkeley on D-day, ``Tell me Clinton didn't take 
that wreath away from you and throw it in the channel, since you were 
picked to represent all the men who died at sea, trying to put the 
young men on the beach.'' I said, ``Hilliary was going to be given that 
honor, and taken away from you. Tell me it didn't happen, Admiral''.
  He says, ``Well, we both held onto it, Mr. Clinton and myself, but I 
threw it in, and God knows about those things. God can sort that out.'' 
Get the Congressional Record, my friends, my colleagues, people 
listening across America, yesterday, Billy Graham's words. In there you 
will see two other Dornan inserts.

                          ____________________