American Valor Quarterly Issue 5 - Winter 2008/09 | Page 7

The conference featured wreath-laying ceremonies at our nation’s
war memorials on the National Mall, including the National
World War II Memorial, the Korean War Veterans Memorial,
and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. Leading the wreath-laying parties were veterans of each era, with color guards provided by students from the Young Marines program.
Pictured right, Lou Brissie meets with the leaders of the wreathlaying ceremony - three of Jimmy Doolittle’s Raiders - at the
National World War II Memorial. On April 18, 1942, barely
four months following the attack on Pearl Harbor, the United
States struck back at Japan when Doolittle’s raid of sixteen B25 bombers attacked various targets in the Japanese home islands, including the capital of Tokyo.
Standing left to right, wearing their signature blue blazers, are
Maj. General David M. Jones, pilot of Plane #5; Maj. Tom
Griffin, navigator of Plane #9; and the co-pilot of Doolittle’s Plane #1, Lt. Col. Richard Cole.
Pictured left, Jack Agnew of the famed Filthy Thirteen jokes
with two United States Naval Academy Midshipmen following his conference panel.
In addition to the panels highlighted in this issue, the conference
featured discussions on Iwo Jima and the Tet Offensive. Adrian
Cronauer, subject of the film Good Morning, Vietnam, recounted
his experience during the war, while Vietnam veteran and author of the Pulitzer Prize-nominated A Better War, Dr. Lewis
Sorley, reflected on the true history of Vietnam.

As is tradition, the conference was capped off with the annual
awards banquet, honoring the service of American veterans
and service members from World War II to today. Pictured
right, Hall of Fame baseball player Ralph Kiner accepts the
Audie Murphy Award as one of several Major League Baseball players who served during World War II.

A panel dedicated to the service of women in the United States
military brought together three generations of female service
members, while four veterans of Operation Iraqi Freedom who
served during the toughest days of 2004 and 2005 spoke of
their recent trip back to the country and the progress that has
been made.
Each of the speaker panels from the 11th Annual Conference
can be viewed by visiting the American Veterans Center’s website
at www.americanveteranscenter.org.

Among several civilian awards was the Edward J. Herlihy
Citizenship Award, presented posthumously to Rick Rescorla,
the retired Army colonel whose incredible life story brought
him to the World Trade Center in New York, where on
September 11, 2001, he was responsible for saving the lives
of nearly 3,000 of his fellow Morgan Stanley employees.
The citations for the American Veterans Center’s awards for
2008 are printed over the next seven pages. We hope you
enjoy their stories o