Subject: Shows Class

William H. Shuey · 2004-08-03T16:42:29+00:00

forwarded from:Peter Young, Florence Last Wed we were in Colo Springs for the AF Academy graduation;featured speaker was George W Bush. A little long winded, but thespeech was punctuated with a lot of applauses, which suggested thata lot of the military brass in attendance support him. However, whatwas more impressive to me was the fact that he personally saluted andcongratulated every single cadet that crossed the stage, my sonincluded. There were nearly 1000 cadets and this process took 1 hour, 40minutes. I watched him through my zoom, and he displayed the personaltouch all the way through: every cadet was saluted; the men were thengiven a hand shake and often a pat on the shoulder with his left handor some other personal words; the women were all given a hug and someof the women cadets also gave him a kiss on the check. Occasionallya cadet would ask for a "wave to my parents" and then the cadet andthe president would turn to the crowd and wave in the correctdirection. He showed as much enthusiasm to the middle and last cadetsas to the first ones -- in fact, he looked like he was enjoyinghimself! At the Academy graduation, the "top 10%" are noted as DistinguishedGraduates (known as "DG's" -- the Academy doesn't have summa, magnacum laude, etc.) and they graduate first. The rest of the graduateswalk across by squadron (36 squadrons). 5 years ago when Clinton wasthere, he only personally congratulated the DG's (takes about 10 minutes) and then he sat down. Bush was offered the same option, but refused - said he wanted torecognize every single graduate. This is the stuff about what the man does that never makes thenews....

Aug 03, 2004 43 Replies

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Al Superczynski 21 years ago

It means that he's among the 41% that don't prefer Kerry.

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Mad-Modeller 21 years ago

Nah, Kerry and Bush are both too sensitive. Somebody needs to do have a continuity meeting with Bush and Cheney so their points get aligned. ;)

Bill Banaszak, MFE

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The Old Timer 21 years ago

yeahbut, Al, he wasn't ~in~ the military; he "had other priorities".....

Have nice!

-- John The history of things that didn't happen has never been written. . - - - Henry Kissinger

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Al Superczynski 21 years ago

You mean like Bill Clinton? If military service has suddenly become a Democratic (sic) party prerequisite for national office what about John Edwards? And what will be their story when Hillary runs?

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