Saluting campus veterans for their military service

The MUSC Public Safety Color Guard processed in, presenting the American flag in all her glory and setting the tone for a very emotional event. With heads bowed and hands over hearts, veterans and guests sang the national anthem and said the Pledge of Allegiance with heartfelt passion. For MUSC veterans, and the guests there to honor them, respect and admiration for the flag were a given. 

Veterans Day: a national commemoration honoring the men and women who serve or have served in the United States Armed Forces. Every year, MUSC pauses to honor and celebrate the dedication, courage and sacrifice of its veterans. While many who wanted to attend were already committed to fulfilling MUSC’s mission in operating rooms, patient rooms, classrooms and labs, nearly 150 people gathered on Nov. 10 in the Drug Discovery Building auditorium to be a part of this year’s special ceremony.

Veterans of all conflicts involving the United States dating back to World War II and those honoring them listened to keynote speaker Theresa Gonzales, DMD, a  retired Army veteran. Her message: Freedom is not free, and it has never been. Gonzales is a professor of oral pathology, director of MUSC Orofacial Pain Management and associate dean of Curriculum and Strategic Communications for the James B. Edwards College of Dental Medicine.

Achieving the rank of colonel, Gonzales served her country in posts around the globe, including Egypt, Iraq and Korea. She commanded formations in Europe and the United States. Recently, she retired from the U.S. Army Dental Corps after a long and distinguished career, and previously had served as the director of strategic communications for the Army surgeon general. In 2009, Gonzales graduated from the U.S. Army War College at Carlisle Barracks, Carlisle, Pennsylvania, the Army’s senior educational institution.

Gonzales opened her remarks, thanking two special guests, men in their 80s and 90s, who fought in the Korean War and World War II. When she introduced the elder of the two, Staff Sgt. Robert Floyd Henderson, who fought in WWII, she said, “You are part of a vanishing breed, sir.”

She also introduced Sgt. First Class James Schuyler, who served in the Korean War. She thanked them for their courage and service.

“I’m the accidental American, the accidental patriot, the accidental Carolinian,” Gonzales said. Her mother, Constance Walker-Webb, was a Londoner, and when the trajectory of her life changed as a result of WW II, so would it affect her future offspring. Gonzales’ father, William “Sargeant” Sullivan, was not a Brit, but an American from Walhalla, South Carolina — a tiny town in the northwest corner of the state. It was through a chance meeting at Charing Cross Station that led to a romantic war time love story and Gonzales’ personal story.

“My parents,” she said, “were members of the Greatest Generation.” Her mother was a professor of classical literature in London — she taught at St. Catherine’s College at Oxford.  She’d lost her fiancé, a regimental officer, and two brothers at the Battle of Dunkirk. “Indelibly etched into the tapestry of our family narrative is Dunkirk,” Gonzales said.

For a time, her mother worked on her doctoral degree in Germany, but returned home at the behest of her father, due to safety concerns. Berlin was not a safe city for Jews in the 1940s. Back in London, she taught at Kings College during the day, and at night, she, like many other patriotic citizens, rolled bandages at Charing Cross Station in the underground Tube Station in the center of London. As London was bombed repeatedly, if one had to evacuate from the war-torn streets of London, the Tube shelter provided safety and safe passage. “And while you were there, you did the work of the war,” Gonzales added.

As many young Americans did during that time, her father came through Charing Cross Station. He was intrigued by many things, none more so that Gonzales’ mother who was busy rolling bandages. While it was unusual for an infantryman, he also rolled bandages at night and finally mustered the nerve to ask her out on a date.

“He rolled enough bandages to tamponade any combat wound in the free world,” Gonzales said with a laugh. But each time he asked her on a date, she declined. “She had paid too great a price on the altar of freedom.”

Operation Overlord, also known as D-Day, was the code name for the Battle of Normandy. This operation launched the successful invasion of German-occupied Western Europe. Gonzales’ father would push out in the first wave. 

Before he left, he had but one final plea. Gonzales shared the tale that secured her parents’ future together. “He said to my mother, ‘If you won’t see me now, promise me if I survive the war, I can come back.’ She knew what channel crossings were like, and was under no illusion he would survive. She reluctantly said, ‘Yes.’”

In 1945 her father returned, having seen combat at the Battle of the Bulge. He hopped the next flight to Lakenheath Air Force Field in London and took a train back to where her mother was still rolling bandages at Charing Cross Station. Even though the war was over, he went AWOL in order to see her. When he finally met up with her mother, he said, “I survived the war, can I date you?” She replied, “When?” He said, “Not now, I’m AWOL.” And back he went that evening to Ramstein Air Force Base in southwestern Germany where he caught the first convoy headed back to the Ardennes Forest — this time with more than simply hope in his heart. Constance kept her word. Sullivan returned home, and after the war, the couple married in the U.K., moved to the U.S. and had five children — all of whom served their country. Her mother and father were married for 67 years.

She said, “I want to share two things: 16 million Americans fought in WW II.  Today, a mere 885,427 remain. They die at the rate of 492 per day, and we venerate their service. They stared Nazi Germany in the face and lived to tell about it. Thank you for underwriting our freedom and our national effort.

“Our nation would be tested again, though we thought we’d get a break,” she continued, “but then came the Korean Conflict. It wasn’t even called a war.” She directed her attention to Schuyler on the front row and asked, “I bet it seemed like a war to you, James, didn’t it?”  Later, she said, the name was indeed changed to the Korean War.  She thanked him again.

“I am the fifth generation of Army veterans in my family, and to all of those who wore the cloth of this nation, I would like you to stand and be recognized — all veterans,” she said to the audience. Well over 100 veterans stood while guests acknowledged their service. 

Gonzales asked Vietnam veterans to continue standing. “This nation owes something to you that you didn’t get upon reentry. We venerate your service,” she told them.

She said that her grandmother once told her, “In war there are no unwounded soldiers.’ I didn’t know what that meant, but I would figure it out over the next 30 years of my own service. My father said all five of his children must serve in the U.S. Army and all must participate as volunteers at the collective defense of our nation. And all did.”

Her father, who friends called “Sarge,” served not only in WWII, but also in Korea and other conflicts throughout Europe and Africa. He earned a Campaign Medal with 7 bronze service stars, a Good Conduct Medal, Distinguished United Badge and Bronze Star Medal with the Oak Leaf Cluster.

Gonzales said that South Carolina has always produced patriots. “Like 19-year-old Ralph A. Johnson,” she said, “for whom our VA Hospital is named — an African-American male from Columbia, who fought as a volunteer for his country, before his own civil rights were realized.”

“On this Veterans Day, we publicly recognize and proclaim that America became and continues to be a free nation under God because of our veterans.  And we acknowledge, as did the 16th president of the United States, Abraham Lincoln, that the people of the United States have a special obligation to their veterans." And with that she shared part of Lincoln’s second inaugural address given on March 4, 1865.

“With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”

And while she praised the efforts of veterans of bygone eras, she also included the most recent to have served.

“This generation of servicemen, this 9/11 generation, has borne the burden of our safety during a decade of sacrifice. Only 27 years old on average, this 9/11 generation — these young men and women — have shattered the false myth of their generation’s apathy — for they came of age in an era when so many institutions had failed to live up to their responsibilities. But they chose to serve a cause greater than themselves. They saw their country threatened. They signed up to confront that threat. They felt the tug. They answered the call. They said, ‘Let’s go. Let’s roll.’ And so they went. And they have earned their place in the military pantheon, among the greatest of generations.

“So to all of them, to our veterans, to our fallen and to their families, there is no tribute, no commemoration, no praise that can truly venerate the magnitude of your service and sacrifice. Your courage and tenacity was forged in the crucible of war, and it is duly noted.”

She read the World War I poem “In Flanders Field,” her voice faltering at times.

“May God bless the alliances that help secure our prosperity and our security. And may God continue to bless these United States. Gonzales out.”

A lone trumpet played taps. All stood to remember the fallen. After a moment of silence, a moving video highlighting the many heroic actions of all branches of the United States military was shown to a grateful audience.