From the Wall Street Journal

Most Americans would not be surprised to learn that Harvard is our nation’s oldest institution of higher learning, that it boasts the largest endowment, and that it has produced more U.S. presidents than any other university.

Most Americans, however, might be hard-pressed to guess another Harvard distinction: the highest number of Medal of Honor recipients outside the service academies.

(more…)

http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/living/2009/10/30/kids.surprise.adopted.marine.kvoa

Here is a wonderful article written some time ago by a great guy and true hero, retired Marine  Col. Tom Greenwood. Enjoy.

November 11, 1998, the Boston Globe

Thirty-one years ago, on Nov. 23, 1967, Marine Corporal Francis J. Muraco was killed in Quang Tri Province in South Vietnam. I never met “Butch,” as he was known by family and friends, but I had the honor of serving with many Marines just like him for the past 20 years. And today I live in his hometown of Winchester, a community that still remembers and loves this bona fide American hero.

Muraco grew up in a close middle-class family with strong, patriotic values. His father, who served with General George Patton during World War II, had been awarded a Bronze Star for valor. Butch was a superb athlete, excelling at baseball. Shortly after graduating from Winchester High School in 1965, he worked in construction. But digging ditches was not his idea of adventure, so he enlisted in the Marine Corps. After basic training at Parris Island, he was sent to Vietnam to join the Second Battalion, First Marines as a rifleman. In October 1967, he was wounded for the first time outside Danang while on patrol. But his medical condition was not serious enough to take him out of action. About a month later, he stepped on a land mine. He was 21 years old — and only six weeks away from going home.

Muraco was the second Winchester lad to die for his country in Southeast Asia, making his loss even more incomprehensible to local residents. Especially since Vietnam was an increasingly unpopular war. Winchester coped with its collective grief in a special way. There was a front-page story in the Winchester Star, and Governor John Volpe attended both the requiem Mass and the full honors military funeral. But this Marine’s story did not end with the playing of taps. Less than two years after Muraco’s death, Debby Ferro, then 13 years old, wrote a letter to the Star, recommending a new elementary school be named in honor of this favorite son.

On April 18, 1969, long before the rest of America began honoring deceased Vietnam veterans, Winchester dedicated the elementary school on Tufts Road to Muraco.

More than 200 people attended the ceremony and heard the powerful words of Superintendent Donald A. Klemer: “This school now takes on a special meaning for every child who will attend it, for every teacher who will teach in it. Discussions of wars are things in history books — but the children will learn that Francis Muraco was called, and he went. “And they will be proud. And each child, each nodding head, will pass the plaque. And ask, with innocence, who he was, what he did, why he left us? And each time, and in each class, a teacher will talk of him and his young death, and they will be proud.” The plaque, donated by the Sons of Italy and the Christopher Columbus Club, still hangs inside the school lobby, inscribed with this message: “To live in hearts we leave behind is not to die.” Above it is an oil painting of Muraco, adorned in his military dress blues.

More than 9,000 children have attended Muraco School. They have felt the inspiration of this fallen Marine. I know because my 8-year-old son recently came home from school and said, “Dad, I saw Corporal Muraco today.” He had entered the school with his friends, as he does every day. But this time he let them go on as he stopped to stare at Muraco’s portrait. He looked into Butch’s eyes, thinking about far away places and wondering if he, too, will be as brave when he grows up. There are great men and women all across our land like Muraco, waiting to be remembered, if not discovered, on this Veterans Day. They command our respect and our admiration.

Here is an article about a great organization helping out WWII vets and bringing them to DC.

Lydian Fischer has had a few moving moments while volunteering with a group that takes veterans to the World War II Memorial in Washington, D.C. But none, she said, was more powerful than when an Army chaplain, during a routine memorial service, asked World War II veterans in the audience to invoke the memory of their fallen comrades.

“If any of you want to remember your buddies, feel free to call out their names,” Mrs. Fischer remembered the chaplain saying to the group, gathered in the shadow of the memorial.

One by one, raising their hands and waiting to be called on, the men called out names. Some of the veterans were stooped with age, but their memories were vivid and tears rolled down their cheeks.

It was a fitting moment to cap a long bus ride from Pittsburgh, as veterans of the war saw, for the first time, the memorial honoring their service.

It was supposed to be a brief stop for the Red Sox to share the World Series trophy with wounded soldiers. But the team lingered at Walter Reed Army Medical Center for much of the afternoon, deeply moved by their conversations with amputees and veterans suffering from post traumatic stress disorder.

It’s always good to root for (my) home team, especially when they are rooting for the real heroes. Here’s the full article.

Gertrude Noone was a 44-year-old insurance policy clerk for Travelers in Hartford, Conn., in 1943 when she enlisted in the Women’s Army Corps.

When she died peacefully Thursday morning at age 110 at an assisted-living facility in Milford, Conn., she was the oldest known living military veteran in the world — a fact that made her proud.

You can find the rest of the story here.