Veterans,
Members, Friends-
HAPPY NEW YEAR! That greeting may seem strange coming nearer to General George Washington’s Birthday
or Valentines Day than to January 1st, but that is how it is when we start putting The Graybeards
together. Shortly before starting to write for this issue I delivered the Keynote address to the Korean
Veterans Association (KVA) Annual Security Symposium in SEOUL. The picture at right was part of the promotional
material of the Symposium.* I was substituting as keynoter for another member of the KWVA, General B. B.
Bell.
Still closer to the time to submit my remarks to our Editor Art Sharp, it was the start of the Road to
the Superbowl time—great football along with snowstorms of the new young century in Colorado, Texas, Oklahoma,
New Mexico, Kansas, Nebraska and numerous other areas.
Road to the Superbowl and great football teams. This led me to reflect on our present situation
in the Korean War Veterans Association. If you are a veteran of the US Armed forces you once served on the
greatest TEAMS in history, great TEAMS because of GREAT TEAMWORK. And our successors today engaged
in the worldwide war on terror are likewise serving. They deserve all the support and credit that we can
possibly extend to them—and the KWVA, The Graybeards, and www.kwva.org
will continue to insist on their victory just as we individually did along the 38th Parallel over half
a century ago.
Perhaps our determination back then is part of the reason that the KOREAN WAR is still not over.
Americans did not abandon their battlefield challenges before getting the job done in WWII and in KOREA.
The war in Korea did not end in 1953 and has not ended yet. About three million Americans have served
there keeping the ceasefire. Behind the security shield thus provided (and always evolving). the
REPUBLIC OF KOREA has become an economic and free government wonder of the world, and the UN
is headed by a brand new Secretary General, a Korean, who may save that world organization from itself.
During most of my time in office I have encountered often vehement challenges concerning the proposition
that the KWVA is not a dying institution. One hears “the Korean War veterans are dying; there will soon
be no Korean War veterans.” The truth is that the KOREAN WAR continues—as the North Koreans are now
demonstrating almost daily—and the last veteran of the KOREAN WAR will be the last man or woman living
who was present in KOREA the day the KOREAN WAR PEACE TREATY is signed and completed.
Back to TEAMWORK: it is the final product of good training, good conduct, common interests, and
esprit de corps. Your President and the Administration will continue to do all that we can possibly do to
develop the TEAMWORK necessary to carry our organization into the future with a federal charter, growing
numbers of younger men, and strengthening relations with our Korean allies and others still determined to
remember that FREEDOM IS NOT FREE in Korea or anywhere else in history.