Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, November 12, 1995 TAG: 9511130101
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-7 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press|
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
``This memorial will be a permanent reminder of just how much we Americans can do when we work together instead of fighting among ourselves,'' Clinton said.
In midmorning, Clinton saluted all veterans in an address at the Tomb of the Unknowns at Arlington National Cemetery, his arrival and departure marked with 21-gun salutes.
``For what we owe them, let us never be forgetful,'' Clinton said, speaking on what he called ``this hillside of honor and respect.''
Later, the presidential motorcade rolled down rain-slicked streets from the White House to a muddy field and a sea of umbrellas on the national Mall, where the World War II memorial will be built over the next several years.
Fifty members of the armed forces, each holding a state flag, nearly ringed the site, which is bracketed by monuments to Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln and is in sight of the Capitol dome.
There, veterans of a war that engulfed the world scattered soil gathered from 16 cemeteries in Europe and Hawaii where thousands of combat casualties are buried.
Clinton spoke of the debt the nation owes not only to veterans who served in uniform, but also to the 16 million women who operated the factories and contributed to the war effort.
He said it will be only a small down payment on the debt the nation owes to the World War II generation ``to build this monument as magnificently as we can.''
Further down the Mall, about 3,000 veterans and their families attended a ceremony at the Vietnam Veteran's Memorial honoring those lost in that conflict. The ceremony facing the wall containing more than 58,000 names of U.S. casualties of the war focused heavily on the themes of reconciliation and overdue honor to those who fought in Vietnam.
At Arlington Cemetery, Clinton concentrated on the lives of veterans today, declaring that far too large a share of those Americans who are in the ranks of the homeless are also veterans of the armed forces.
It is, he said, ``a national disgrace that people who were willing to lay down their lives for this country do not have a roof under which they will lay down their heads tonight.''
by CNB