VALUES

VALUES

A Talk for the Army ROTC Cadet Awards Ceremony, Eagle Battalion

Georgia Southern University, 18 April 2001

Thank you Colonel Knox [for the introduction]. Let me start with a joke, with apologies to any of you who will be going into the field of law: There once was a man named Odd. For all of his life, he lived with this name and the jokes it brought. As a boy, he was always the "odd man out." As a married man, he was part of the "odd couple." As he approached death, he was determined that there would be no more "odd" jokes. So he wrote in his will that the epithet on his tombstone would read: "Here lies an honest man and a lawyer." After his death, his family fulfilled his wishes. But whenever people wandered through the cemetery and read his tombstone, they always pointed to it and said "That's odd."

As you can tell from the joke, my talk is about values, but first, let me ask "How many of you will graduate this year?" [One cadet raised his hand.] When I graduated from Washington State University, my draft board sent me a notice to report for my physical. It was January 1964, and President Johnson and Secretary of Defense McNamara were getting ready to escalate the war in Vietnam. My draft board had noted that my 2S deferment was gone. I was no longer attending school and they were going to draft me. I was going to serve my country whether I wanted to or not! I wrote them that the U.S. Air Force had just commissioned me a Second Lieutenant through the ROTC program. The draft board sent me a big form for me to fill out and for my commanding officer to sign. Well, my orders were not to report for active duty until April, so I had no idea who my commanding officer was. I balled up the form and threw it out. What could they do? I was already in the military!

So this month is the 37th anniversary of my first month of active duty. Since my degree was in Chemical Engineering, I was assigned to the then Air Force Rocket Propulsion Laboratory at Edwards AFB, CA. A lot was happening at that time. The cold war was in full swing. The hot war in Vietnam was getting hotter. It had been just two years since the Cuban Missile Crisis, when we came as close to all-out nuclear war as we have ever come. Research on nuclear weapons was going full-bore, and later I would be a part of that. The U.S. and the Soviet Union were locked into a space race and it would be five more years before we would put a man on the moon. A lot of money was being spent on Research and Development and I now in the midst of it.

As is often the case in the military, there was a lot of money for programs, but, unfortunately, not much was spent on people. My base pay was $222.30 a month. Admittedly, the dollar was worth more back then, but still, $222 was not a lot of money even then. We Second Lieutenants were living from paycheck to paycheck and sometimes things got tight. One Lieutenant, not me, bounced a check at the Officers' Club and that bounced check upset the senior officers on base. I don't know what happened in other organizations, but my boss's boss, Lieutenant Colonel George Babitts, who was in charge of my research division, called us all in, one at a time. He was a tough guy who had flown B-25s in Italy in WWII. He was intelligent, too - he wrote a book on thermodynamics. At my meeting we started to go over my finances. We started through my expenditures from the big items such as car payments and insurance, down to the little ones such as Officer Club dues. When we finished going through my budget, I had $5.00 left over at the end of the month - my mad money!

In this case of the bounced check, the particular issues were personal responsibility and that a person's word is his bond. This last value was not just one's written word as on a check. Even the spoken word was one's bond. This emphasis on values is one reason Tom Brokaw called the WWII generation the greatest one. In his book, The Greatest Generation, Brokaw lists some of those values: duty, honor, economy, courage, service, love of family and country, and personal responsibility. Actually, these are the values of previous generations, too. Let me give a few other examples.

One example of a person's word being his bond is from Kentucky Fried Chicken franchises. Colonel Harland Sanders (1890-1980) started these franchises by handshake deals. No elaborate contracts, nothing written - just a person's word. In exchange for showing how to make the chicken with his famous recipe of eleven spices, Colonel Sanders was to get $0.05 per chicken. It was all on the honor system. Locally, that practice continued down to Inman and Mary Sue Hodges. They are still living, but have turned control of the Kentucky Fried Chicken business here in Statesboro over to their children.

Other examples of higher values are presidential messages in the New Testaments given to soldiers and sailors going to war. Here is a 1941 message from President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in a New Testament. I will read you the WWI message from President Woodrow Wilson because he spells out many different values. [General Pershing's message in the same Bible is shown on the right.] Here is what President Wilson wrote: "The Bible is the word of life. I beg that you will read it and find this out for yourselves - read, not little snatches here and there, but long passages that will really be the road to the heart of it. You will find it not only full of real men and women, but also of things you have wondered about and been troubled about all your life, as men have been always: and the more you read the more it will become plain to you what things are worthwhile and what are not, what things make men happy - loyalty, right dealing, speaking the truth, [can you imagine President Clinton writing something like this?] readiness to give everything for what they think their duty, and most of all, the wish that they may have the approval of the Christ, who gave everything for them - and the things that are guaranteed to make men unhappy - selfishness, cowardice, greed, and everything that is low and mean. When you have read the Bible you will know that it is the Word of God, because you will have found it the key to your own heart, your own happiness, and your own duty." Those were the values of earlier generations.

Unfortunately, every person and every group has flaws. For instance, Colonel Babitts had a fiery temper. And the WWII generation was not as successful as former ones in passing on its values. Why? One problem was that the war robbed them of their youth. So after the war they emphasized what they had missed - their youth. They actually reversed that particular value. It used to be that younger people appreciated older people because of their accumulated wisdom and experience. But many of the WWII generation started to focus on being or looking young. This is their unfortunate legacy; nevertheless, it was still a great generation.

My last example is from the present. Last Friday, my wife and I were talking to Dr. Larry Stalcup, a professor in Family and Consumer Science here at Georgia Southern University. He told us that most employers in the restaurant business today are looking to hire employees who have good values. The education is secondary - the restaurant managers can always train them, but they want the values to be there already.

I commend you and the Army for trying to hold on to the values of the past generations of Americans. They are spelled out on this card you all carry. The values of loyalty, duty, respect, selfless-service, honor, integrity, and personal courage. I hope you don't think that these values on this little card are window dressing. I encourage you to do your best to follow them. They will help you be a better leader of soldiers. Especially, they will help you be a better leader of soldiers in combat. Also, these values should sound familiar to you. They are the same as, or similar to, those I listed from earlier generations. Thus, following these values will be your link, your tie, to those preceding generations of warriors that fought and won world wars.

Remember our lawyer friend Mr. Odd? One day a mother and her little boy were walking through the cemetery. The little boy read the tombstone, looked at his mother, and asked: "Are there two people buried here?" I hope that does not apply to you. You will be noted for duty, honesty, service, and the like.

APPENDIX: Why Lawyer Jokes?

Why are there so many lawyer jokes? There are many answers, but one came across my path as I was writing this talk. It was a proposed settlement for a class action suit against Iomega Corporation. I have an Iomega Zip Drive. The basis of the suit is an alleged defect in Iomega Zip Drives that causes a "clicking" problem. Regardless of how much damage this problem may have caused to my data, my drive, or other drives, the proposed settlement would give me a small rebate on Iomega products: for instance, $17.50 toward the purchase of a Zip 250 Drive. That is, if I have a valid Proof of Manifestation. Otherwise I get a lessor rebate: for instance, $10.00 toward the purchase of a Zip 250 Drive. So even if I had a substantial loss, I get next to nothing in damages. However, the lawyers get up to $4,700,000.00 under the proposed settlement.