Stanford University and the City of Palo Alto hosted a joint celebration of Veterans Day at the David & Joan Traitel Welcoming Pavilion, honoring veterans and military members. Former Secretary of State and director of the Hoover Institution Condoleezza Rice delivered the keynote address.
“Today is about recognizing the service, sacrifice and continued contributions of the veterans in our community,” said Zach Wright M.A. ’27, a former staff sergeant in the U.S. Air Force.
The Stanford Mendicants began the event with an a cappella performance of the national anthem. Other speakers at the event included vice provost Michele Rasmussen, Palo Alto Mayor Ed Lauing, Commander of American Legion Post 375 Ray Powell and Donna Zolezzi, president of South Bay Blue Star Moms, a military family support organization.
According to Rasmussen, Stanford has 36 undergraduate student veterans and more than 100 graduate student veterans.
“We are grateful for their courage, their strength, for their valor and for answering the call to serve,” Rasmussen said. “Let us long remember the liberties we enjoy because they stepped up. Your service has made our world safer and our lives richer.”
Also in attendance at the event was Vietnam War veteran Sergeant Manny Velasco of the U.S. Marine Corps. Representatives from the South Bay Blue Star Moms honored Velasco with a Quilt of Valor, made by executive board member Denise Dobrenz.
Velasco called the gesture a symbol of “remembrance, care and gratitude.”
“It’s a reminder that we are seen and remembered and we are still part of something bigger than ourselves,” he added.
Zolezzi, who was a teenager during the Vietnam War, recalled how many of the men in her senior class were drafted through a lottery. She remembered how her classmates returned to protests and anti-war gatherings.
“It wasn’t a very favorable war. They weren’t treated very well when they came back home, and many of them didn’t come back home,” Zolezzi said. “We try to honor them, welcome them home and thank them for their service because they deserve that.”
It was this act of volunteering and sacrifice that Rice praised in her own speech. She also called for people to reflect on the progress the U.S. has made since its founding. Rice, who grew up in the segregated South, remembered the gravity of the moment when she was sworn in as Secretary of State, in the Franklin Room named for Benjamin Franklin.
“Here is this black woman, child of the segregated South, taking an oath of office to defend the Constitution of America, which once counted her ancestors as three-fifths of a man,” she said. “That’s the American collective story: progress together. Progress through our institutions. Progress because we keep an eye not just on who we were and who we are, but who we want to be.”
Rice added that she thinks this progress is possible due to the protection offered by the U.S. armed forces. Although America has periods of time where it “stumbles,” Rice believes Americans are united by the belief that “it doesn’t matter where you came from, it matters where you are going.”
In his speech, Lauing paid tribute to his father, who enlisted for military service after the bombing of Pearl Harbor during World War II. According to Lauing, his father refused the mandatory two-year service, asking instead for three years, “because two wasn’t patriotic enough.”
Rice and Lauing believe that the values of patriotism are still alive today.
“I think about the greatest generation, who took up arms to defend a Europe and an Asia that were in dire need. But I want to assure you, there is a next greatest generation now,” Rice said. “And they believe that who we were, who we are and who we will become are worth defending.”