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Floor Speech

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Mr. YOUNG. Madam President, panel 2E, row 71. Not long ago, a young lady visited the Vietnam Veterans Memorial during a visit to Washington, DC. She walked along the wall searching the black granite panels, and she saw the name right there in front of her. She stopped and pressed her hand against it. It was panel 2E, row 71, Alvin C. Forney.

Across our country, not just on our National Mall but on the boulevards of our State capitals and in the squares of our small towns, there are names of brave Americans etched in memorials, the names of those who never came home. And there are those who did come home, whose names may not be on monuments but whose example of service and sacrifice for their country is no less inspiring.

For two and a half centuries, they have answered the calls. They have protected our freedoms. They placed their lives in the line of fire oceans away so that their countrymen can live lives in peace here at home. They are the citizen soldiers who defeated the King's army, who ended the scourge of slavery, who saved Western civilization and liberated concentration camps, who stood down communism and stand vigil against terrorism. They are more than just names, though. They are the spirit of this country: strong but merciful, forever guarding our freedoms, and devoted to our fellow citizen.

Cpl Alvin Forney lived this example out in his all-too-brief life. He seemed destined, no matter his path, to make a difference. And he did. Tall, handsome, with a bright smile and infectious optimism, he was an ace athlete, a football, track, and basketball star at Shortridge and Washington High Schools in Indianapolis.

A member of a military family, Corporal Forney enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps in 1961, and he went west. He graduated from Marine Corps Recruit Depot, San Diego, and then trained in the mountains near Camp Pendleton. He endured the forced marches and step hikes in the tarantula- and rattlesnake-filled scrub.

San Diego-trained marines are sometimes derisively called Hollywood marines by their Paris Island peers. You see, Tinseltown is just up the Pacific Coast Highway. But if Hollywood did ever try to create the ideal marine, Corporal Forney could be its muse.

You can see it in the old photos, the focus, the confident air, the spotless uniform. He looked like a gentleman marine, a hero. And he wasn't just courageous or strong. He was patient and decent. Slow to anger, he seldom swore--a rarity, of course, for a U.S. marine. He loved his family, and he loved his country.

When he arrived in Vietnam in the summer of 1965 as part of the Third Marine Expeditionary Force, his chief concern was not for himself. It was for his brother. You see, Army SGT William Forney, the corporal's brother, was departing for Vietnam. Corporal Forney wrote their mother, Minnie:

I don't mind being over here, but I worry about Bill coming over.

You see, his brother William had married shortly before deploying, and Corporal Forney was concerned about his brother's separation from his new bride.

Shortly after that letter arrived, a military car pulled into the driveway. It was a telegraph from the Department of Defense that came. Cpl Alvin Forney had been struck by fragments of a mine during a patrol, and he was killed in action near Da Nang. It was September 1, 1965. He was 22 years old.

Corporal Forney was awarded the Purple Heart, and he was laid to rest in Indianapolis's Crown Hill Cemetery among a President and Vice Presidents, poets, businessmen, inventors, and all the rest. And he wasn't at all out of place.

Corporal Forney's mother visited his grave every September until the day she died. Beneath the words on his headstone ``Beloved Son and Brother'' and after the mention of Vietnam, his headstone read: ``The first casualty from Indianapolis''--which he was. But a mere statistic he was not.

It was a half century later that that young lady came to the wall in search of Corporal Forney's name. She came because her grandfather asked her to, because 50 years earlier, he had served with Corporal Forney at Naval Air Engineering Station at Lakehurst, in New Jersey, and he never forgot him. He could still see that squared-away marine. He could still hear his soft-spoken voice. And he could still remember the day in September 1965 when he walked into headquarters at Lakehurst and saw the secretaries sobbing and heard the tragic news: Corporal Forney had been killed in action in Vietnam.

The corporal's family, too, they never forgot him. He is still in their hearts. His younger siblings and cousins, they still remember the days before he left for Vietnam, how kind, loving, and protective he was; the memories of the dinners he treated them to; of popping his fingers and whistling; his enthusiasm and joy.

Just weeks ago, I met Mary Allen, Corporal Forney's younger sister, on a flight back to Indiana. She shared her brother's story and asked that I remember him. I will.

Of course, on Veterans Day, which just passed, we remember all of those who wore the uniform, who pledged their lives to freedom's cause--yes, because they are owed our grateful devotion, our eternal gratitude every day, not just one day in November.

Beyond that, though, to forget them is to take them for granted in an act of national self-destruction. Decades pass, generations come and go, and values change. In many ways, that is the natural course of a society in search of a more perfect Union. But those who have defended that Union carry with them unbending values--values that are essential to a democracy. Our veterans set an example. They are a monument to the values at the heart of this experiment in liberty: service and sacrifice, humility and honor, loyalty to country and love of countryman, dedication to others and to causes greater than oneself.

Panel 2E, row 71. When that young woman went to the wall in search of panel 2E, row 71, it was not just because her grandfather had served with Alvin Forney. It was because, as her grandfather said, he set an example that all Americans should be proud to follow.

Without citizens like Corporal Forney, there is no America. He is not forgotten. None of our veterans or the example they set are, nor will they ever be. Cloture Motion

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