Thursday, September 3, 2009
Honoring Our Nation’s Veterans and Service Members
Service to our country takes on various forms and today, I honored two types of service members. I started my day at the Grout Museum District in Waterloo by presenting medals to three veterans and their families. Ensuring all veterans have the honor they deserve is so important on a personal level to me that I introduced legislation to facilitate the expeditious delivery of military medals to veterans.
The museum provided an amazing backdrop with their Sullivan Brothers Iowa Veterans Museum. Ms. Billie Bailey, Executive Director of the Museum greeted me and introduced me to the veterans and their families. The Grout Museum and one of the families – the Nelsons – arranged for a flag presentation by the local American Legion Post # 138-VFW Post 1623 as a symbol that everyone can now salute the flag even though they are not in uniform.
I started the presentation by honoring Arlinn Gushee of Ankeny, who received nine medals, including a Purple Heart and Bronze Star for his service in the U.S. Army in Vietnam. Arlinn was injured by enemy fire on four separate occasions. On February 20, 1970, Arlinn was hit in the left hand and when he was walking back to the medic he stepped on a land mine and lost his legs. He spent the remainder of his military service at Fitzsimmons Army Hospital in Denver. After he was discharged, Arlinn finished his education and became a language arts teacher of middle school students first in the Aurora, Colorado and then for 17 years in the Urbandale, Iowa Public Schools, before retiring this spring. In fact, one of my staffers was one of Arlinn’s students!
Frank Foster, who served in the U.S. Army during World War II and the Korean War, is now deceased. Frank’s children; Darwin Foster and Eleanor Foster McGowan and grandson Kevin Mettlin accepted seven medals on his behalf for service in major battles for Luzon in the Philippines and Ryukyus in the East China Sea.
I was then proud to deliver nine medals to Charles Nelson of Waterloo, a former Navy man, for his service in major battles at the Bismarck-Archipelago, New Guinea and the Southern Philippines during World War II. Charles wasn’t expecting the presentation and was deeply moved by the honor. Charles family came out in a big way to support today’s event and set pictures from his time in service into a video presentation!
Another highlight from my day was traveling to the Community Recovery Center in downtown Cedar Rapids to see firsthand the work that national service volunteers are doing to literally rebuild the city after last summer’s flooding. Norwalk native Brandon Routh, who many of you may recognize from the 2005 film “Superman Returns,” joined me at the event, as did Congressman Loebsack.
Today I learned that Cedar Rapids has more AmeriCorps members serving here than in any other city except New York City. I think this shows human nature at it’s very best.
The Xavier High School and LaSalle Middle School bands kicked off the afternoon, where three national coalitions - Voices for National Service, ServiceNation, and America Forward - hosted a day of service to celebrate the power of service and innovation to address many of the challenging issues facing communities in Iowa and across the nation. Throughout the day, event participants engaged in service projects, from rebuilding homes to cleaning up neighborhoods, in support of flood recovery efforts across the city. Brandon and I jumped right in, helping service members nail some wood onto a new front porch for Don and Lisa Phillips and their family whose home was devastated by flooding.
One of my top priorities is to secure appropriate resources for AmeriCorps , but earlier this year, Congress took a giant step forward in passing the Serve America Act. The legislation sets out a vision to more than triple, to 250,000, the number of full-and part-time national service volunteers eligible to serve. And it will give an important new incentive to seniors: Retirees who complete a full year of service will be allowed to transfer their scholarship award to a child or grandchild.
This is especially important here in Iowa, where we have a very strong and active contingent of Senior Corps volunteers – people over age 55 who put their skills and talents to work in communities all across the state.
I was touched when Rachel Shatten of America Forward, Iowa Green Corps Member Cindy O’Hern and Foster Grandparent Effie McCollum presented me with thank you notes for my support of these initiatives. And I was even more moved when Mary Roff, a flood victim and beneficiary of the volunteer assistance, told me that 381 nights after the flood, she was able to lay her head down on her own bed because of the work of AmeriCorps volunteers.
