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This is a special day. A day of remembrance, a day of gratitude, a day of love. It is our Memorial Day, dedicated to and observed in commemoration of our honored dead.
On occasions like this, gathered as we are in the presence of the dead, it is often the custom to speak of the brevity of life, of its momentary spark of light in the darkened stage of time and eternity. Of the dream that vanishes, of ashes to ashes and dust to dust, of the finality of death and the silence of the grave.
But I prefer to depart from that custom and to speak today of life's value; of its meaning, of its purpose, but most of all, its endurance. I say to you that this is not a day of mourning nor a time for sadness nor the occasion for grief. For we are gathered here today to hold neither wake nor funeral. Those services have been concluded, and the bodies of our dead have been returned to the good earth, where they now rest in serene glory, in everlasting peace.
Rather on this day, let us celebrate their lives. Let us rejoice, for our dead are not lost nor are they forgotten. They have not passed into nothingness, nor have they been silenced. They live by our memories of them. When we speak their names, tell of their lives, and recall their deeds.
It is as the poet Quintias Enias (ph) wrote:
Pay me no tears, nor for my Passing grieve, I linger on the lips of men and live.
Let us now remember back 40 years ago yesterday, on August 1st, 1948, the Office of Special Investigations, United States Air Force began operations. It was a time of challenge for the newly independent Air Force itself, which was not yet a year old.
Abroad, the Air Force was engaged in the beginnings of what would prove to be a lengthy major first test of its operational mission capabilities: the Berlin Air Lift.
At the same time at home, the Air Force was faced with a serious challenge directly touching upon its very survival. It was an argument over roles and mission, turning on the fundamental question of which service, the Air Force or the Navy, would hold and carry out the U.S. strategic bombing mission.
In those days there was yet another challenge, a challenge threatening the very integrity and security of the ability of the Air Force to carry out its primary national defense mission.
There were allegations of corruption in our procurement process, of bribes and influence peddling, and there was a growing, intensely focused and mortally threatening espionage campaign, especially concentrated on atomic weapons and the United States Air Force.
An implacable Soviet Union was inexorably bent on confrontation with the United States at what we now know as the early stages of the Cold War.
That latter challenge was even more pressing by the fact that there existed within the new Air Force only a fragmented, irregular and often locally influenced and controlled mechanism for criminal fraud and counterintelligence investigations.
In wrestling with those problems, our first Air Force leader saw the solution in a single, independent investigative agency which would impartially obtain facts and present those findings to a judicial or other corrective action by command authorities.
But in so chartering and structuring OSI, there was a calculated risk. Within one investigative organization was to be concentrated central authority and responsibility and a broad range of authority that had not been seen before within the military services, thus carrying with it the potential for abuse of power, and even failure. It was a great trust placed upon our chartered members.
Such was the context 40 years ago, in 1948, when OSI was born. Today a OSI, mature in being, celebrating this month four decades of distinguished and exemplary service to the Air Force and the Nation, shoulders with confidence, effectiveness and respect a gamut of worldwide responsibilities.
The trust placed in OSI by our Founding Fathers has been kept. The challenge to raise above human failing to reach for and achieve an ideal, has been met. The charge as stated in the chartering document of 1948 to provide a competent, centrally directed special investigations service to all Air Force activities has been fulfilled. The mandate executed and the call to destiny answered.
But today we commemorate more than the founding of an organization or the prestige that it has gained or the power it holds. Rather, we honor here today those who bequeath to us by their lives a cherished legacy.
The rolls of the names that you have before you reflects many who were charter members, and many more still who came to OSI and served during the early and middle years of its history. They were officers, NCOs and civilians.
A few held or rose to positions of prominence as commanders, directors or senior staff officers. Most were special agents, administrative technicians, secretaries and clerks, the muscle and the heart of OSI. They were men and women from every state of our Union, from many varied social and economic backgrounds, drawn from the great melting pot of this wealthy nation.
Thus if we wish to know the extent our debt to these heroes, we need look no further than the heart of the legacy they gave us. It is found in the qualities OSI has come to represent and the values this organization stands for. From the very beginning, they instilled in this organization integrity and objectivity, the hallmarks of OSI.
Our predecessors gave this institution of government a conscience. They gave it light, they gave it reason, they demonstrated that an organization like ours can have values, that honesty and impartiality can be more than just sterile ideals; they can be practiced and lived by an institution as well as by men.
There is a deeper meaning to be drawn and a fundamental lesson to be learned from the inheritance our predecessors gave us. In it is found the reason OSI has not only endured but also has grown and is today held in such high esteem.
The values they instilled in OSI were first their own; they lived by them, and in that way they imprinted them upon the institution that they brought into existence. They believed in God and love of country and the loyalty of family and the rights of man, in duty and honor and morality and right over wrong, and in the merit and nobility of work, to be done well no matter how large or small the task.
OSI did not teach values and standards to these airmen and patriots; they brought them to OSI, having already practiced them in their own lives. By that example they gave OSI its conscience, its moral authority, its work ethic and its spirit. But even more than that, they set the standards upon which we and all who follow are and will continue to be measured. That then is their legacy.
Their places are and continue to be filled by the memories we have and hold of them; of their deeds, of their dedication and of their sacrifices. But we who serve today also do so under obligation to them, to keep faith with them, to live by the standards and values they gave us, to preserve, protect and to bequeath to our successors the legacy. It is a sacred trust.
The present is filled with pride, with confidence and with hope, as we celebrate 40 years of service to the Air Force and our Nation. We can took forward to the future with renewed faith in the righteousness of our cause.
But when we depart here today, let us do so, pledged that our honored dead did not labor in vain, that their expectations for and of us will not go unfulfilled, that the lives of these airmen and patriots we honor will continue to light our path, and that we will never allow the beacon of their memory to go out.
As the poet Lawrence Finions once penned:
They shall not grow old as we that are left grow old,
Age shall not weary them nor the years condemn,
At the going down of the sun, and in the morning,
we will remember them.
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