Thomas G. Kelley

"I downplayed the fact that I was a Medal recipient until recently. I was too busy being a naval officer, and I certainly did not want to let having the Medal of Honor give me any special advantage when it came to accomplishing certain things, okay? I bent over backward to avoid that, so I ended up downplaying the Medal completely. But now I found that it does permit me to have doors opened here in the state of Massachusetts to help veterans, and for that reason alone I am probably more active than I used to be."

"I dont consider the Medal my personal property. As a recipient, I feel I am wearing it to represent all the men and women who have served over the years with the same dedication and courage. Having said that, it did make me very awre of my responsibilities as a recipient, talking to kids, trying to instill the values of service, courage, honor, and duty, so its been a very good part of my life. Personally and professionally it added a dimension. I certainly dont dwell on events of thirty-one years ago. That was thirty minutes out of my life and it came and went and life goes on. Ive led a wonderful life since then."

"A couple of years after high school is a good time, and it should be mandatory. In the Vietnam era there were so many ways to avoid service, college deferments, this, that, and the other thing, so that notion of service fell on the shoulders of those who were less advantaged and were unable to do college and things like that. I just dont think thats the way it should be. I like to think back to the way it was when this country was formed. When people like John Adams and George Washington led the way, men of substance, means, and intellect. Yet they were the ones who sacrificed the most to make this country what it is today."

"College Lesson Number One: You find out who your true friends are when you stop doing favors for them."

"College Lesson Number Two: Its dangerous to step outside of your comfort zone, particularly when mobsters are involved."

"College Lesson Number Three: If a deal sounds too good to be true, it probably is."

"Okay, Mr. Kelley, everything looks good. Well send this package to Boston, and you should be hearing from us in a few days." I thanked the sailor and walked out with mixed emotions. What had I gotten myself into? Was my dream of being a sailor and my desire for naval service, after many setbacks along the way, finally going to be realized? I could now tell my parents I had an opportunity to serve my country, and theyd be proud of me. I was ecstatic. Finally, a week or so before graduation, the door opened for me, and a path lay ahead. Life gave me a second chance, and I took it."

"It may sound as though I joined the Navy on a whim because I didnt have any other career options, and that wouldnt be entirely false, but its not entirely true either. My love of the sea began in early childhood, and a sense of adventure had pushed me to join the sea service even before college. Id been imbued with the importance of service by my parents and church my entire life. This was simply the inevitable coming to fruition."

"Theres a tradition in Massachusetts, starting with the North Bridge in Concord, with U.S. history starting here, a history of service. We take care of our own. When you think of John Adams, people like that who just embody service. Abe Lincolns family was from here, right out near where Tom Hudner lives in Concord. Theres a tradition here. The first Vietnam veterans memorial in the U.S. was built in South Boston in 1982. The towns here seem to have paid more than their proportion in sending sons off to war."

"[About September 11, 2001] We agreed earlier that this was a wakeup call, but I think the pain is being felt by other people. The American public is not going to have a sense that heyre at war. We still have an all-volunteer force fighting our wars, so different from the way it was during World War II whene very block had sons and daughters overseas. Id love to see not necessarily a return to the draft as much as some sort of national service involving everybody. I think that would give us all a sense of sharing and belonging to the crisis were in right now. I mean, its almost business as usual: People are inconvenienced, revenues are down because of dot-com companies going out of business, but nobody is really feeling the pain yet except those who lost loved ones in the events of September eleventh and now overseas in Afghanistan."

"Ive found in this job something I never stopped to think about before: Someone who serves in the military has no control over whether theres a war or no, so this state and all states treat their wartime vets different from how they treat their peacetime vets, which I think is fundamentally unfair. Im trying to get that changed, so that anybody who serves is treated the same way when it comes to benefits. The Cold War was won by men and women who were not considered wartime veterans, tracking their subs, doing sonar, playing cat-and-mouse type of games."

"Before me stood a Marine recruiting poster come to life. Tall and with an athletic build and a dozen medals pinned to his chest, Marine Corps Major Kelly oozed confidence. Even his firm handshake and the way his eyes locked onto mine conveyed a no-nonsense attitude. I was about to graduate from the College of the Holy Cross, in Worcester, Massachusetts, with an economics degree and no clue how to use it. I was looking for the next step. Several of my classmates who had been in the Navy ROTC program spoke with such reverence about Major Kelly, I was sure theyd stake their lives on his ability to walk on water. One day I bumped into him on campus and decided to introduce myself. My heart skipped a beat as Major Kelly uttered the words that would ultimately change the course of my life. "Its a shame that you couldnt be one of us," he said, referring to my failed attempt to get into the ROTC program due to my poor eyesight. Major Kelly congratulated me on my forthcoming graduation, wished me luck, and disappeared from my life. But his words stayed. They created a picture in my mind of a team that I knew I wanted to be a part of."