[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 82 (Thursday, June 5, 2003)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1157-E1158]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                            OMAR BRADLEY DAY

                                 ______
                                 

                         HON. KENNY C. HULSHOF

                              of missouri

                    in the house of representatives

                         Thursday, June 5, 2003

  Mr. HULSHOF. Mr. Speaker, earlier this month, Moberly, Missouri 
celebrated its annual Omar Bradley Day. This day is an opportunity for 
area residents to remember a great hero and reflect on General 
Bradley's role in preserving the freedoms we hold dear.
  As such, I wish to enter the following article, ``Who Is Omar Bradley 
and Why Should I Care?'' into the Congressional Record. Written by 
Moberly resident Sam Richardson, this item appeared in the Sunday, May 
11, 2003 edition of the Moberly Monitor-Index. I believe the points it 
makes are a fitting tribute to General Bradley.

               Who Is Omar Bradley and Why Should I Care?

       Here's a good topic to toss around over your dinner 
     tonight:
       ``Who is Omar Bradley and why should I care?''
       It's a fair question around these parts, what with the 
     annual General Omar Nelson Bradley Luncheon, Lecture and 
     Symposium coming up Monday, May 12, at the Municipal 
     Auditorium in Moberly.
       ``What did old Omar Bradley do to cause a whole lot of 
     people to come to his hometown 22 years after he died?''
       Another more than fair question.
       The stock answer is that he is Missouri's most famous 
     military figure, a member of the Missouri Hall of Fame, a guy 
     with a 34-cent stamp with his picture on it, the fellow 
     captured in bronze in the soaring statue in Rothwell Park, 
     the ``Bradley'' who is the namesake for the Bradley Fighting 
     Vehicle so prominent in last month's Operation Iraqi Freedom.
       Moberly public schools, St. Pius X School, Moberly Area 
     Community College, the University of Missouri, Truman State 
     University and other educational institutions in Bradley's 
     home state may teach young Missourians why Omar Bradley is 
     important to them. And, indeed, he is important to them.
       Of course, young and old alike should know Bradley went 
     from Moberly High School to the U.S. Military Academy at West 
     Point and eventually commanded the largest American fighting 
     force ever assembled, was our nation's last five-star 
     general officer and first Chairman of our Joint Chiefs of 
     Staff.
       At the 2002 Bradley Symposium, LTC Jay Carafano, then 
     editor at the National Defense University at Fort McNair in 
     Washington, D.C., told the audience one of the key reasons 
     Bradley was not high on the public awareness screen was 
     because of his low profile on the silver screen. Hollywood's 
     big films about World War II didn't have much of a role for 
     Bradley. LTC Carafano noted Bradley was on screen in 
     ``Patton,'' ``The Longest Day'' and ``Saving Private Ryan'' 
     only briefly, hardly a leading character.
       At this year's Bradley Symposium, two of the Truman 
     Presidential Library's leading historians will make the point 
     that Bradley was a pillar of leadership in his time.
       Tom Heuertz, associate education coordinator, and Ray 
     Geselbracht, education and academic outreach coordinator, at 
     the great Independence museum will try to explain how highly 
     Bradley was esteemed by President Harry S. Truman. ``Truman 
     saw him as one of the world's greatest generals ever, in the 
     same class with Hannibal and Napoleon,'' Heuertz said 
     yesterday.
       Because of the positions he held, Bradley clearly was a 
     favorite of at least three Presidents: Franklin Roosevelt, 
     Truman and Dwight Eisenhower.
       On a recent edition of ``The Newshour with Jim Lehrer,'' 
     Lucian Truscott IV, a noted military history author, 
     reflecting on American generals' leadership in Operation 
     Iraqi Freedom, suggested the U.S. Central Command's Gen. 
     Tommy Franks and others were nowhere near the class of 
     ``great generals like Patton, Bradley and Eisenhower.''
       Monday, Colonel Jon H. Moilanen, dean of students and 
     administration at the U.S. Army's Command and General Staff 
     College in Leavenworth, Kansas, will describe how Bradley's 
     military expertise still molds the careers of young officers 
     who serve throughout the world today.
       This is pretty heady stuff for a chap from our town. In a 
     story about Bradley Day in The Washington Times recently, 
     Moberly was referred to as ``quaint'' and ``picturesque.''
       For his part, Bradley was, indeed, quiet, modest and 
     unselfish, along with very smart, a natural leader and an 
     exceptional athlete. The kind of man you'd expect to come 
     from a quaint and picturesque town like ours.
       In the 1915 West Point class yearbook, it is reported 
     Bradley was a sergeant, first sergeant and lieutenant; he was 
     a sharpshooter; he was a member of the football team and 
     track squad; and, perhaps most importantly to him at the 
     time, he was the star of the Army baseball team all four 
     years he was there.
       The yearbook says, ``His greatest passion is baseball, 
     football and F Company. In baseball, many an opposing player 
     has trifled once with Brad's throwing arm, but never twice. 
     And a batting average of .383 is never to be sneezed at.''
       ``His most prominent characteristic is 'getting there,' and 
     if he keeps up the clip he's started, some of us will some 
     day be bragging to our grandchildren that, 'sure, General 
     Bradley was a classmate of mine,''' the yearbook says of our 
     favorite son.
       And, in the style of the day, the yearbook assigned each 
     cadet a motto. Bradley's: ``True merit is like a river, the 
     deeper it is, the less noise it makes,'' attributed to 
     Anonymous.
       How true that turned out.
       Although his classmate Eisenhower became Supreme Allied 
     Commander in World War II, and then President, Bradley was 
     the first in his class to become a brigadier general.
       One reporter wrote in May 1944, ``Endowed with the mind of 
     a mathematician and the body of an athlete, General Bradley 
     is essentially American in ancestry, training and experience; 
     he is slow spoken but sharp witted; he is polite and at times 
     even diffident, but immensely certain of his own skill--the 
     type of soldier who for 168 years has sustained the 
     republic.''
       And finally, this former captain of the Moberly High School 
     baseball team, a boy worthy of his own shotgun at age 13, a 
     young man who graduated 44th in a class of 164 at West Point, 
     would tell a reporter about dinner at his humble home in 
     Randolph County:
       ``We'd sit down at the supper table, my mother, my dad and 
     I, and we'd talk things over. That's where I learned a lot 
     about love of country and right from wrong.''
       From a dinner table in Randolph County to the greatness of 
     the world, that was the man who will be remembered Monday at 
     the 2003 General Omar Bradley Luncheon, Lecture and 
     Symposium.

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