Duty, Honor, Country: A Legacy of Service and Leadership | Army Heritage Center Foundation

Remarks as prepared for delivery: Thank you, Bob, for that generous introduction and for this extraordinary honor. I am deeply humbled to receive it, particularly in a room filled with men and women who have devoted their lives to serving our country and preserving the Army’s history. No one embodies that more than Bob. He retired as a colonel in the Pennsylvania Army National Guard, earning the Bronze Star and the Legion of Merit, and has spent his career in public service, including as Inspector General of the Commonwealth and as Senator Toomey’s state director. Thank you, Bob, for your remarkable service to our Commonwealth and our country. I also want to recognize a few friends here tonight. Julie Germany, your leadership of this Foundation has been transformational. Thank you for putting together tonight’s wonderful program. We’re also joined by Governor Haley Barbour, who led Mississippi through Hurricane Katrina. Haley, Dina and I are grateful for your decades of friendship. Also, my friend, State Senator Greg Rothman, a Marine Corps and Desert Storm veteran. Out of respect for him tonight, I’m going to hold off on sharing from my rich inventory of “dumb” Marine jokes. And State Treasurer Stacy Garrity, herself a retired Army colonel and a fellow Desert Storm veteran. Thank you all for being here. I’m particularly honored that my mom and dad are here tonight. Both lifelong educators, they were my first and best role models in public service. The real living legends are the soldiers who came before me, including those here tonight. Howard Kramer. Vin Tedesco. And thousands more whose stories are kept in the Army’s archive in Carlisle. Please join me in thanking them. I am proud to stand in a long line of Pennsylvania leaders who served in our Army. That legacy stretches back to the hundreds of Pennsylvanians who crossed the Delaware with Washington. On that bitter Christmas night, three words captured the stakes: “Victory or Death.” Their courage turned the tide of the Revolution. That legacy continued just south of here at Gettysburg, where a young colonel from Erie named Strong Vincent saw that the Union’s left flank was dangerously exposed. Without waiting for orders, he rushed his brigade onto Little Round Top just in time to meet the Confederate assault. The 26-year-old Vincent was mortally wounded in the fighting that followed. But his decisiveness saved the Union line and, ultimately, the cause of freedom. On D-Day, “Jumpin’ Jim” Gavin, a coal-country kid from Mount Carmel, parachuted into Normandy as a brigadier general with the 82nd Airborne. He was the only American general to make four combat jumps in the war. His rule for officers was simple: be the first out of the airplane door and the last in the chow line. That same morning, Dick Winters of Ephrata, whose story Band of Brothers made famous, led a dozen men against four German guns firing toward Utah Beach. Outnumbered and under heavy fire, they took out the guns one by one, helping the free men of the West come ashore and liberate Europe. And in our own time, General Chris Donahue of Chambersburg, a fellow West Point graduate, was dispatched to Kabul to help bring order to an otherwise chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan. He was the last American soldier out, boarding the final transport only after ensuring his soldiers were safely aboard. Ironically, some have criticized him for that moment. But it embodied the most fundamental principle of leadership, the one Jim Gavin lived by: your soldiers come first. Last year, I visited Donahue in Estonia, where he was leading the Army’s innovation and transformation efforts in Europe. He was integrating the technology and lessons from the Ukrainian battlefield into our forces so that when the next fight comes, we’ll be ready. The Army will sorely miss his leadership. Different generations. Different wars. But the same understanding of leadership: the willingness to take responsibility, to lead from the front, and to put something greater than yourself first. I would never put myself in the company of the men I just mentioned. But I am proud to have worn the same uniform. Whenever I speak to a group, I introduce myself as the 54th elected senator from Pennsylvania and the ninth senator from West Point. I do so because those are the two forces that made me who I am: Pennsylvania and the United States Army. And I can tell you, none of this was the plan. I grew up in Bloomsburg, spending my summers trimming trees and baling hay, and my school years bussing tables at the Magee Hotel and competing on the football field and wrestling mat. As a sophomore, I was a benchwarmer on the football team who got into games only after they were decided. Then a new coach, Tom Lynn, watched the film and told me he saw a starting middle linebacker, if I was willing to work for it. He saw a leader in me before I did. Pennsylvanians are a special breed. We’re gritty. We work hard. We don’t ask for much, and we don’t complain much either. My coaches and neighbors taught me these virtues, along with the other Pennsylvania values of humility and patriotism. West Point wasn’t on my radar until a football recruiting trip my junior year. My dad wanted me to apply, but I was hesitant at first. Then Jim Scheiner, a family friend from Harrisburg, sat me down and made the case for it. Jim was a West Point graduate and decorated Vietnam veteran who went on to serve as Pennsylvania’s Secretary of Revenue. Just as Coach Lynn had seen potential in me on the football field, he saw possibilities for my life that I hadn’t yet imagined. His stories inspired me, and with a nomination from Senator Arlen Specter, I became the first kid from Bloomsburg to go to West Point in decades. A year later, my parents drove me to West Point. We spent the night at a Ramada Inn in Newburgh, and the next morning they dropped me off at Michie Stadium. We sat in the stands with our families until someone announced: Say your final goodbyes. New cadets exit to the left. Parents exit to the right. That day began my Army career. At West Point, I found a higher calling: Duty, Honor, Country. And from Ranger School to the 82nd Airborne and Operation Desert Storm, the Army taught me what those words demand of leaders. Pennsylvania values and Army values. Together, they form the virtues that define great leaders in every arena: the vision to set the course, the courage to act decisively, the humility to improve continually, and the selflessness to serve something larger than yourself. Those same virtues carried Strong Vincent onto Little Round Top and kept Chris Donahue on the ground in Kabul. I’ve tried to live by them on the battlefield, in business, and now in public service. The kinship between Pennsylvania values and Army values shouldn’t surprise anyone in this room. Their histories have been bound together from the start. The Army was born in Philadelphia and came of age at Valley Forge. Pennsylvania built the arsenal of democracy. And today, from Scranton’s artillery shells and the Philadelphia shipyard to York’s armored vehicles and Pittsburgh’s innovations in AI and robotics, we’re building the arsenal of the future. But Pennsylvania’s greatest contribution to the Army has never been its steel. It’s always been its people. One of the great privileges of being a senator is nominating outstanding young Pennsylvanians to our service academies, just as Senator Specter once nominated me. This April, I called a young man named Andrew Bebbington from Washington, Pennsylvania, the city where I was born. I had good news and better news. The good news: the Naval Academy had accepted him. The better news: so had West Point. Hearing the excitement in his voice took me back more than 40 years, to the day I learned I was headed to West Point. Sharing this news is one of the great joys of my job. In June, I hosted all 107 young Pennsylvanians headed to our service academies this year, each of whom has since begun training. 27 of them are at West Point. 37 are at the Naval Academy. 17 at the Air Force Academy. 14 at the Coast Guard Academy. And 12 at the Merchant Marine Academy. It’s easy to be pessimistic about America these days. Our politics is highly polarized, technology is changing our lives faster than ever, and the world is increasingly dangerous. But when I see young Americans like these, with all their talent, their energy, and their love of country, it’s hard not to be optimistic about our future. They remind me of the words of Dwight Eisenhower, a West Pointer who made his home at Gettysburg: “History does not long entrust the care of freedom to the weak or the timid.” These young people are neither, and our nation is in good hands. Stories like Vincent’s, Gavin’s, Winters’, and Donahue’s recruit the next generation and inspire all Americans. That’s why I’m grateful for the work of the Army Heritage Center Foundation, and I hope you’ll support it. The same Pennsylvania that helped forge Washington’s Army, that sent its sons to Gettysburg and Normandy, is still producing young men and women willing to answer the call of duty. And as long as that remains true, America’s best days are still ahead of us. Thank you, and God bless America.