Establishing A Grant Program for Cemetery Research and Producing Educational Materials

Floor Speech

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Mr. LAMB. Mr. Speaker, I begin by thanking Chairman Takano and Ranking Member Roe for their support getting this bill through committee, and my Republican colleague, Brian Fitzpatrick, for cosponsoring it with me.

I rise tonight in support of H.R. 2385.

Mr. Speaker, we are here on the 75th anniversary of D-Day, and it always struck me, an American general who said, if anyone ever needed proof that the United States of America fought for a cause and not for conquest, it is that when we invaded another continent halfway around the world, the only soil we ever asked to maintain was enough to bury our own dead.

It has been true, throughout generations, that veterans ask very little recognition or very little thanks for their service. I have it on good authority that, when they built the monument to World War II here in Washington, D.C., throughout that whole year, there were a number of veterans who approached the construction site after hours or early in the morning, and they handed their dog tags to the people who were working there and just asked them to throw them down in the pit underneath those big stone pillars that they were putting in the monument.

Anyone who has ever served understands that feeling, that total commitment to the cause and lack of desire for recognition. But we do programs like the Veterans Legacy Project because we need to communicate that same spirit of sacrifice to the next generation, and that is what this project can do.

The graves in these national cemeteries and the memorials that we find there cause young people, especially, to slow down in a world that is speeding up, and they express a confidence in the thing it is that they memorialize. They tell young people that there are things that are permanent in this world, as hard as that is to believe, and that there is nothing more permanent than the sacrifices that these men and women have made.

They also tell them that there is one thing that is not permanent, which is the freedom that we all live under every single day, and that it has to be refreshed and renewed with the sacrifices of people in each generation.

So by expanding this program, making it more accessible to more high schools and more colleges and more community groups, we can spread that spirit of sacrifice, of permanence, of total commitment to the cause of freedom throughout the next generation, and I can't think of any time when that has been more needed.

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleagues for supporting this bill.

Mr. DAVID P. ROE of Tennessee. Mr. Speaker, I have no further speakers, and I am prepared to close.

Mr. Speaker, I once again encourage all Members to support H.R. 2385, as amended, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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