John Gwizdak, former commander in chief of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, delivered the keynote address during the Georgia Tech Military Affinity Group’s Armed Forces Appreciation Day April 28 at the Alumni House.
Gwizdak quoted an essay by Otto Whittaker: “I am the United States of America. I was born on July 4, 1776. The Declaration of Independence is my birth certificate. … I am Nathan Hale and Paul Revere. I stood at Lexington and fired that shot that was heard around the world. I am Washington, Jefferson and Patrick Henry. I’m John Paul Jones, the Green Mountain Boys and Davy Crockett. I am Independence Hall, the Monitor and the Merrimac. I am Lee, Grant and Abraham Lincoln. I remember the Alamo and the Maine and, God yes, Pearl Harbor.
“Then freedom called. I answered, and I stayed until it was over over there. I left my heroic dead in Flanders Fields, on the rocks of Corregidor, on the bleak, snowy, frozen slopes of Korea, the steamy jungles of Vietnam, the deserts of Kuwait, the mountains of Afghanistan and the flea-bitten deserts of Iraq,” he said.
Gwizdak concluded the reading with the lines, “I am the nation. I was conceived in freedom. And God be willing in freedom I will spend the rest of my days. I am the United States of America.”
He held the end of a U.S. flag and said today it serves as “a beacon of freedom in a world that is oppressed.”
“Someone said, ‘Where will we meet when we get to heaven?’ I said, ‘We’ll meet by the flag because it’s been in every hell hole in this world. Why would it not be in a precious place like that?’ So if you get there before me, hold on, I’ll be there. Wait on me. I’ll meet you at the flag,” Gwizdak told the room full of ROTC members and veterans of all branches of the military.
Jack Henderson, IM 79, who served 29 years in the Marine Corps, is president of GTMAG. He encouraged those on hand to be active in the affinity group “so that those who served and those who will serve can come together.”
During the program, those who served and those who had not paid tribute to special guest Helen Denton, a Woman’s Army Corps veteran of World War II who typed invasion plans for Gen. Dwight Eisenhower.
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