[Congressional Record Volume 172, Number 129 (Thursday, August 6, 2026)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4510-S4512]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
RECOGNIZING AMERICA250 PENNSYLVANIA YOUTH ESSAY CONTEST
Mr. McCORMICK. Mr. President, I rise today to recognize two
outstanding young Pennsylvanians, Brady
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Sirochman and Ronit Luthra, whose essays were selected as the winners
of my America250 Pennsylvania Youth Essay Contest.
As our Nation celebrates the 250th anniversary of its founding, there
is no more fitting place to reflect on the American story than
Pennsylvania. Our Commonwealth was the birthplace of American
independence and has stood at the center of our Nation's history ever
since. From the signing of the Declaration of Independence to the
fields of Gettysburg, from the furnaces and factories that powered
America's rise to the communities that continue to strengthen our
country today, Pennsylvania has helped define the American character.
Brady, a 10th-grade student at Laurel Highlands High School in
Uniontown, wrote about General George C. Marshall, a fellow Uniontown
native whose extraordinary life demonstrated that the defense of
liberty requires both the strength of a soldier and the wisdom of a
diplomat. Ronit, an 11th-grade student at Downingtown High School East,
wrote about Pittsburgh inventor and industrialist George Westinghouse,
whose ingenuity, courage, and faith in the ideas of others helped
electrify the modern world.
Brady and Ronit did more than recount the accomplishments of two
remarkable Pennsylvanians. They considered what those lives tell us
about America: that service matters, that bold ideas can change the
world, and that our country is strongest when talented and determined
people are given the opportunity to rise.
Their essays also offer great reason for confidence in America's
future. Brady and Ronit represent the kind of thoughtful, curious, and
engaged young leaders our Nation needs now more than ever. As we honor
the Americans who shaped our first 250 years, we should also celebrate
the young people who will carry their legacy forward and lead our
country into its next 250. I congratulate Brady and Ronit on this well-
deserved recognition, and I ask that their winning essays be printed in
the Record below.
Brady Sirochman Essay: There stands a soldier in the middle
of Uniontown, Pennsylvania. His look of determination, loaded
musket, and bronze tint make him conspicuous to any passerby
who roams through the five-way intersection which he watches.
Behind the soldier, a series of nineteen flags tower above
the streets below in unison as a symbol of prosperity. For
the most part, Uniontown is a quiet place, situated on the
border of the Keystone State and submerged in the rolling
hills of the Appalachian Mountains. One would not expect a
hero of international fame and notoriety to have been born
here, and yet across the road from the soldier, on a bench
flanked by a series of plaques, sits the statue of one,
George Catlett Marshall Jr.
Marshall's story began in Uniontown over one hundred years
ago on a cold New Year's Eve. The fourth child born of George
Catlett Marshall Sr., a wealthy coke businessman, and Laura
Emily Bradford Marshall, George C. Marshall grew up in
Uniontown before leaving for the Virginia Military Institute
to pursue a career in the armed forces. After graduating,
Marshall was commissioned as a second lieutenant of Infantry
in February of 1902, in time to serve in the Philippine-
American War. Marshall would continue to rise through the
ranks of the military in the lead-up to World War I, during
which he achieved the position of assistant chief of staff
for the newly created 1st Division.
This role put him in prime position to be the first soldier
of the AEF to step foot on European soil, and one of the
first to enter the trenches of the Western Front. In
addition, his dauntless planning in the Battle of Cantigny
delivered the first American victory of the Great War. The
culmination of Marshall's triumphs came not on the
battlefield, but from Washington, when on September first,
1939, Marshall was sworn in as Army Chief of Staff by
Franklin D. Roosevelt, just hours after the invasion of
Poland. While serving as Army Chief of Staff, he organized
the largest military expansion in American history, had a
role in selecting the majority of American generals, and
helped plan the D-day Invasion.
Most importantly, on December 16, 1944, Marshall was the
first American general promoted to the five-star rank of
General of the Army, placing him on par with his European
counterparts. For his part in planning and carrying out the
Allied victory, Winston Churchill once called him the
``Organizer of Victory'', while Harry Truman once stated
``Millions of Americans gave their country outstanding
service. George C. Marshall gave it victory.'' After the war,
a change began to take shape in Marshall, transforming the
five-star general into a peacekeeper. Shortly after retiring
from his position as Army Chief of Staff, Marshall was sent
on a mission to broker a peace deal in the Chinese Civil War.
Although a failure, Marshall remained committed to
maintaining peace with the new Communist government in his
position as Secretary of State, against the wishes of the
Department of Defense and voices within his own department.
While serving in his position as Secretary of State, he began
the program which he is possibly most famous for today, the
Marshall Plan. Through it, American aid would be sent to
Europe in order to help rebuild from the destruction caused
by World War II. In many ways Marshall not only won peace in
Europe but also provided for its continued existence, while
enhancing American interests in the region and preventing the
spread of Communism into Western Europe.
For his work on the Marshall Plan, and other post-war
achievements such as advocating for peace in the Middle East,
bringing the Netherlands to negotiate with Indonesia, and
serving as President of the American Red Cross, Marshall was
awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1953, the only American army
official to gain such recognition. On a bench, only a stroll
away from where he was born, sits the statue of George C.
Marshall as he watches over the soldier whom he organized the
victory of and the flags of the nations whom he helped
rebuild. The entire scene, and the story of Marshall's life,
highlights America's role as both a sword and shield against
the forces of tyranny.
Through his military career spanning service from the
Philippines to Europe, and later his organization of the
armed forces in World War II, we see his life as a
personification of America's willingness to defend liberty
aggressively. However, through his career post-war in the
fields of diplomacy and government aide, we see his life as a
personification of America's willingness to defend liberty
peacefully. George C. Marshall is a unification of these two
necessities, as at America's best, we understand the need for
a soldier, as well as the need for a diplomat.
____
Ronit Luthra Essay: Every American schoolchild learns the
name Thomas Edison. On the other hand, far fewer learn George
Westinghouse, even though it was Westinghouse, working out of
Pittsburgh, who won the argument that decided how the modern
world would be powered. His story deserves a place in our
national memory, not because he was a genius, though he was,
but because his life shows the greatness America produces
when real talent meets a country willing to reward it. His
combination of mechanical brilliance with a sense of
obligation to the fellow citizens around him flourished in a
country of opportunity such as that prevalent in the United
States of America.
Westinghouse arrived in Pittsburgh following the Civil War,
a young veteran who had served in both the Union Army and
Navy. He carried no Ivy League pedigree and no inherited
fortune. What he did have was a restless mechanical mind and
a willingness to bet everything on his own judgment. At just
twenty-two, he patented the railway air brake, a device that
let an engineer stop an entire train at once rather than
relying on brakemen scrambling between cars. The invention
not only saved countless lives, but turned railroads from a
dangerous form of transportation into the dependable network
that carried and continues to carry a growing nation's people
and goods. Such an invention also made him a man with the
capital to think bigger.
And thinking bigger is exactly what he did. In the 1880s,
when a major dispute broke out over the future of
electricity, Westinghouse decided to throw himself into the
center of it. While Edison had staked his reputation on
direct current, a source of energy offering limited range, he
was opposed by Westinghouse, who believed alternating
current, a source of energy offering a greater range and
power, was the answer. Ultimately, the conclusion of the
controversy would be one to determine whether electricity
stayed a luxury confined to a few wealthy city blocks or
became something available to nearly every home in the
country.
Over time, the fight escalated. Edison ran a public effort
to frighten Americans away from the technology, arranging
disturbing demonstrations meant to paint alternating current
as deadly. Westinghouse answered not with theatrics but with
results. He recognized the brilliance of an eccentric
immigrant inventor named Nikola Tesla, bought his patents,
and gave him the freedom to perfect the alternating-current
motor. Where Edison offered fear, Westinghouse offered proof,
and he let the better system speak for itself.
The verdict came in 1893, when Westinghouse won the
contract to illuminate the World's Columbian Exposition in
Chicago. Before an audience of millions, he switched on a
hundred thousand lamps at once, and the fair blazed with a
light no city had ever seen. Two years later his company
harnessed Niagara Falls, sending its power all the way to
Buffalo and proving that the force of a river could run the
machinery of an entire economy. Nearly every outlet in
America today traces its lineage to a decision made in
Pittsburgh by a man who trusted the evidence over the noise.
Yet the wattage is not what makes Westinghouse worth
remembering. It is the character behind it. He treated his
workers with a decency rare for his era, granting them a
half-day off on Saturdays, building housing and pension
plans, and sharing the rewards of the enterprise with the
people who built it. When the panic of 1907 stripped him of
control of the company he had founded, he
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did not retreat into bitterness. He kept inventing until the
end of his life, holding over three hundred patents.
Ultimately, his life reveals what America is capable of at
its best. Here was a nation that let a self-taught veteran
with no advantages rise on the strength of his ideas alone,
then rewarded him for backing an immigrant genius whom nearly
everyone else had written off. The country asked no
permission of any ministry or court before a private citizen
remade the daily life of the entire world. The lightbulb over
a farmhouse in Kansas and the current that today powers a
data center racing to keep America ahead in the race for
technological supremacy both owe a debt to Westinghouse's
stubborn confidence in a better system.
While we tend to celebrate the loudest inventors,
truthfully, it was people like Westinghouse, a determined
Pennsylvanian, who got it right. He built things that lasted
while treating people fairly, expanding what ordinary
Americans could expect from their lives. In an age when many
wonder whether the country's best days are behind it, his
story reminds us that renewal has always been our national
habit. America has produced individuals like him before, and
if it stays true to the conditions that made him possible, it
will produce them again.
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