As I was leaving live chat this morning, a quitter asked asked me, "Where are you bound for, Candy?" And when I replied, "July 15" he remarked, he remarked, "Beautiful place. Have you ever been there before?"
Accoubtibility, Brotherhood, Success: Those three hallowed words reverently dictate what you ought to be, what you can be, what you will be. They are your rallying points: to build courage when courage seems to fail; to regain faith when there seems to be little cause for faith; to create hope when hope becomes forlorn.
Unhappily, I possess neither that eloquence of diction, that poetry of imagination, nor that brilliance of metaphor to tell you all that they mean.
The unbelievers will say they are but words, but a slogan, but a flamboyant phrase. Every pedant, every demagogue, every cynic, every hypocrite, every troublemaker, and I am sorry to say, some others of an entirely different character, will try to downgrade them even to the extent of mockery and ridicule.
But these are some of the things they do: They build your basic character. They mold you for your future roles as the custodians of the path to freedom. They make you strong enough to know when you are weak, and brave enough to face yourself when you are afraid. They teach you to be proud and unbending in honest failure, but humble and gentle in success; not to substitute words for actions, not to seek the path of comfort, but to face the stress and spur of difficulty and challenge; to learn to stand up in the storm but to have compassion on those who fall; to master yourself before you seek to master others; to have a heart that is clean, a goal that is high; to learn to laugh, yet never forget how to weep; to reach into the future yet never neglect the past; to be serious yet never to take yourself too seriously; to be modest so that you will remember the simplicity of true greatness, the open mind of true wisdom, the meekness of true strength. They give you a temper of the will, a quality of the imagination, a vigor of the emotions, a freshness of the deep springs of life, a temperamental predominance of courage over timidity, of an appetite for adventure over love of ease. They create in your heart the sense of wonder, the unfailing hope of what next, and the joy and inspiration of life. They teach you in this way to be a quitter.
Everything else in your professional career is but corollary to this vital dedication. All other public purposes, all other public projects, all other public needs, great or small, will find others for their accomplishment. But you are the ones who are trained to quit.
Yours is the profession of accountability, the will to win, the sure knowledge that in war there is no substitute for victory; that if you lose, the nation will be destroyed; that the very obsession of your service must be: Accountibility, Brotherhood, Success.
Others will debate the controversial issues, national and international, which divide men's minds; but serene, calm, aloof, you stand as the guardian, as its lifeguard from the raging tides of conflict, as its gladiator in the arena of battle. For a 365 days you have defended, guarded, and protected its hallowed traditions of liberty and freedom, of right and justice.
- modified from General Douglas MacArthur Sylvanus Thayer Award Acceptance Address: Duty, Honor, Country.
Proud and honored that I was able to help you and still am. Quit with you EDD LBPNC
