has it made it to the pentagon, the white house, when is it going to happen, i said i really don't know. other people would find out before me and would tell me. i heard general so and so, it is on his desk. i was like it is new news to me, i didn't know that. so it didn't seem like the biggest part of my life. i kept in my mind if it did come through, it would be an opportunity and privilege to get out there and represent so many veterans and military service members. but chance to advocate for some of them and mentor a few others. so when it did happen, in the past few months, it has been fast. i have been doing a lot of media and traveling, but i tell a lot of people, the up tempo is no higher than deployment overseas. it is something i have gotten used to, but i was in california

earlier this week, already lost on which day it is, but that's what happens overseas, too, you lose track of time. while i was down there, i was talking to some med students at ucla with my doctor, and one of the things the pao down there said is i can't believe you didn't want to go to disneyland and to lakers are not playing now, but a kings game and this and that while you're down here. i said well, there's plenty of time in my life to do that. i want to do did you ever that makes a difference. part of it, i was talking to med students, i was telling them how important the role of a doctor in the military is. said if out of 100 one of you joins the service, does what the doctor did for me and other soldiers, that's the difference there. i try to pick a lot of my

events. i'll pick and choose to go to that will make a difference. there's a few, don't get me wrong, that are fun. but my choice was the melt. i chose to reenlist last year before the award. [ applause ] >> it is a chance to make a difference. working with wounded soldiers, fun to watch their resiliency, great attitudes. it's a decoration that i can wear for everyone. especially those that gave the ultimate sacrifice. [ applause ] >> thank you, le roy. one more question from the audience. >> are you going to do something

inappropriate? >> we wonder if we could hear from ashley and linda. just see what their perspective is. >> it is certainly okay. ashley, are you okay? would you like to say anything? >> yeah, she does. i'll volunteer her. [ applause ] >> there it goes, leroy. you're through now. >> thank you. >> i'll take it around. >> you're a mother with children and you kind of represent the country, whether you like it or not.

>> changed our life. it's kind of a mixed feeling when he received this medal because i look at all of our other militaries and are out there and the families, we all sacrifice the same thing, so sometimes in a way i feel like they should all be receiving this, also. not just us. and so when he was awarded it, we have a lot of friends and family and spouses saying congratulations to me. and i said no, this is for all of us. congratulations to all of you because he wears this and our family represents every single one of our military and the families, and as far as

receiving the medal, it changed our family but for the better. our kids are aware of all the things that do go on, especially when they visited him in san antonio, the burn victims, it just really -- our kids have been able to take that and go back and share with other kids and our community. and one thing that for veterans day, our school is doing their veterans assemblies. my husband will be at each one of our kids' schools to speak. and our oldest has written, was just asked to introduce him and said mom, i'm proud of dad, but i don't want to just acknowledge him, i want to acknowledge all of our military and our veterans, and he wrote this full on page, speech, a full speech,

and he asked me to proofread it, and i sat there and cried. i was like i don't know how i'm going to hold this together. it made me realize he's a quiet kid, but made me realize wow, he really gets it. he really, truly gets it. and proud to be his wife, proud to represent the military and say thank you to our veterans and to everyone, watching the videos, very emotional for me. especially since i got to meet a lot of our medal of honor recipients, means a lot. but also for the fallen, like my husband said, we just lost four guys. one of them we were close with. that's been very, very rough. left behind his wife and two baby girls. so just another reminder, when he puts -- i help him put that

out there what they're doing for us. all in all, it has been positive and medal of honor are great people have come into our life. we are blessed he is still among us and with us. [ applause ] >> my dad is robert maxwell, and he's had the medal all my life, so growing up, he never made a big deal at all about it, and i used to take it with me to grade school and show and tell it. wear it around. so i just thought that everybody's life.

i think beyond his medal, kindness and gentleness, and that was him before the medal. just knowing he has the medal makes me so proud. he'd be the same person without it. he's really taught us a lot in our life as a child.

[ applause ] >> mrs. hooper, joe hooper is a name on an award that will be presented tonight to brian thacker. his memory lives on through that award as well as other things. and mrs. hooper, if you would like to say anything. >> it is always such an honor to get to be here, and i thank everyone for being so nice, but joe always said i was doing my job. anybody in the military would have done exactly the same thing if they had been in the exact same place that i was. sometimes you don't have a lot of choice, you just have to get the job done. [ applause ] >> thank you. somebody i introduced in the beginning, mr. dan murphy whose son was killed in afghanistan. dan, would you like to add

anything? no, you spent a lot of time keeping the memory of your son alive. >> thank you. i'm in a lot different position than most. i have three living recipients here. i not only lost my son, but he also lost most of his s.e.a.l.s team. so i see things from a different perspective. what i can tell you and what i notice in my time dealing with others that have received the medal of honor, whether pos humusly or alive, not just their courage, but the fact that like michael, they all thought something higher than just of themselves. they thought of others, and that

their overriding principle was not so much what happened to them but what was happening to their men, and i think that's kind of the perspective that i bring. i know what mike did and why he did it, and i get a better perspective, understanding what these three men and why they did what they did. [ applause ] >> well, ladies and gentlemen, i think we'll wrap it up now. thank you for asking that question. added great dimension to what we came here for. i think you would agree with me that we will leave here richer in spirit than when we came in. and for the perspectives that you've heard and the questions that have been asked and answered by all of you and the meda honor recipients,

thanks very much. have aat day. [ applause ] you're watching american history tv. 48 hours of events that document the american story. all weekend, every weekend on cspan-3. louisiana governor bobby jindal is expected to give his proposal for the next fiscal year. a budget $900 million in the red. in sh reflect port, it is mostly cloudy and 37 degrees at the airport. 38 in barksdale, 38 in menden. you're listening to shreveport news radio 710.

>> next weekend, book tv and american history tv explore history and lit rather culture of shreveport, louisiana. saturday starting at noon eastern on book tv on cspan2. author gary joiner on the union army failure in louisiana from one damn blunder from beginning to end, the red river campaign of 1864. then a look at 200,000 books from a book collection at the lsu shreveport archives. a walking tour of shreveport and bulger city. and american history tv, sunday, 5:00 p.m. eastern, from barksdale air force base, a look at the base's role on 9/11 and a history of the b-52 bomber. physical it the founding father's autograph collection at the louisiana state museum. and from pioneer heritage center, medical treatment and medicine during the civil war. shreveport, louisiana, next weekend on cspan2 and 3.

next is a film produced in 1974 by the u.s. army. portions of the film were reported in the pentagon in the hall of heroes. the hall of heroes was dedicated in 1968 by president lyndon johnson and contains the names of the recipients of the medal of honor. the film aired as part of the big picture series on abc television from 1951 through 1975. the series focused on historic battles, figures and traditions in u.s. military history.

the long years stretched behind us into the past, forming corridors of time which echoed to the bugle's sound of valor. those years and that valor have been given tangible focus here in this quiet shrine of tribute, the hall of heroes. here on the inner ring of the pentagon, this space is dedicated to a nation's remembrance. not of events, but of deeds. deeds of americans in uniform who gave more than was asked, more than could be asked of them. not always their lives but

always themselves without pause and without reservation. each man whose name appears on these walls and those whose names will appear here are members of a unique fraternity of courage. they are all recipients of our nation's highest award, the medal of honor. it is given to those whose actions meet the standards spelled out in these few words: gallantry and intrepidity, the risk of life above the call of duty. to such men the hall of heroes was dedicated on a sunny spring day, may 1968. >> today we confer the medal of honor on four more gallant americans. this is the first time that four men from each of the military services have been so honored together.

charles e. hagermaster, james e. williams, gerald o. young, richard a. pittman. they will place their names now in a new hall of heroes, created here in the pentagon as a memorial to all who have earned their country's highest award or courage in combat. seeing two of his comrades for courage in combat. seeing two of his comrades seriously wounded in the initial action, specialist hagermaster unhesitatingly and with disregard for his own safety, rushed through enemy fire to provide them medical aid. [ applause ] >> sergeant pittman quickly exchanged his rifle for a machine gun and several belts of ammunition, left the relative safety of his position and unhesitatingly rushed forward to aid his comrade.

[ applause ] >> petty officer williams was serving as patrol officer of two river patrol boats when the patrol was taken under fire by two sampans. he boldly led the patrol through the intense fire and damaged or destroyed 50 sampans. disregarding serious burns, captain young aided one of the wounded men and then attempted to lead the hostile forces away from his position. for more than 17 hours, he evaded the enemy until rescue aircraft could be brought into the area. [ applause ] >> with the addition of those four names, the roll call of valor totaled 3,210. each name a reminder which illuminates for every man who

reads it a higher vision of his kind. originally, there was only one version of the medal of honor. today there are three. this one specifically for the army, and there another one for the men of the navy, marine corps and coast guard, and finally, one for the air force. they all, however, celebrate the same qualities and actions, qualities and actions which add up to what we call, inadequately, heroism. it's a quality whose high connotation is safe now as always, because those who would pull it down somehow never stand quite tall enough to reach it. it is a quality for all times and all people. and for us as americans, its roots reach back to our first beginnings.

it was there to put steel into the determination of the ragged ranks which moved to defy the british at concord bridge. it was there in the hearts of the first citizen soldiers who left homes and families, gathering to pursue their awakening dream of national independence and individual liberty. it upheld them through the incredible hardships through years of struggle. inally to yorktown. the flame which lit from within those first men to call themselves americans and to place their lives and all else that they had or might hope for

in the balance of freedom was kindled there, never to go out. but the hard-won independence of the united states was to require reassertion again and again. the next test of whether american sovereignty was to be an accepted and honored fact among the nations of the world came in 1812. the british practice of stopping american ships on the high seas into the british navy was at issue here. and the war was primarily a naval one. its one major land battle has come to be known as the battle of new orleans. stubborn, resourceful american woods men faced ranks of disciplined british forces who fell bravely, but in numbers too great to be borne.

in the end, this brief war of 1812 made its point to the watching world. americans would live in and individual citizens would enjoy their rights as citizens wherever on earth they might no neles appeared here. from among the ranks of those who fought in 1812. the medal of honor had not yet come into being, but the qualities that the medal would these were there, as they have always been. and these qualities were soon again to be solid tribe. before it was a century old, the nation faced a conflict that shook it to its foundation and marked in deep suffering the beginning of its maturity -- the civil war. it has been called the war of brother against brother, and so it was. a more tragically exact description would be hard to

come by. the soldier in gray fought with fiery bravery that was rooted in a proud way of life. a tradition in which honor and gallantry were deeply fundamental. hi depleted, but in the end, his resources would be. the men of the union forces that first suffered from the effects in their high commanders, but their ultimate mission was too discouragement. on each man in blue, a profound responsibility rested. whether the nation endured would depend heavily on his faith in the union's cause and his ability to prove that faith in the most demanding of all testing grounds. so it was that the nation,

searching in its agony for the promise of its future, found ngf its sons. the longings, fears and loneliness of a boy coming suddenly into manhood. this was so like the developing state of the nation itself. soldier and nation together found that their fears and doubts were not so strong as their faith in the cause of a unified country. the soldier in blue kept that faith and fought for it with steadfastness and courage, and a grateful people in the midst of war forged a medal to honor their courage. in the swirling furry of this war of american against american, the medal of war was born. the end, we know, because we

live in the unity that this tragic war preserved. and in national shrines like gettysburg, we honored the men of both sides who gave what they believed to be right. ♪ >> here are the names. the last of the men in blue are gone. but the union they preserved remains. and honors for all time, the men who made it possible. and right over here is a roll call of names from the years which followed the civil war, the time when the nation grew, expanding westward, the west.

charged with the task of making fr regular army. out west that meant the cavalry. the troopers who rode into that wide country were vastly outnumbered. and their adversary was often a master of combat, a rawhide tough and experienced fighter, dangerous to underestimate. this era in america's growth has passed into legend, but real men lived it. many were awarded the medal of honor. the names of their battlegrounds are obscure now, most of them. others will never be forgotten. names like little big horn, where 24 of the men who stood with custer won the nation's highest award. but wherever he fought, on the plains, among the buttes or in

the timber, he got the job done. that job was simple enough to state. it was to establish security and stability across the vast middle reaches of the continent. from ocean to ocean, the union stretched, and the continental united states was changed from a goal to a fact. but full security had only just been established in the great western country within our bord called on to do battle outside our shores. in the spanish american war,

america's desire to help the cubans to their independence from spain flamed into action when the battleship maine was blown in the harbor. rooseve roosevelt's charge made their famous charge up the slopes of san juan hill. 30 soldier of this war, won the nation's highest tribute. the first to win army medals of honor on foreign soil, 81 navy and marine corps fighting men were also awarded the medal. this first conflict by american ground forces outside our nation's borders was brief, but it was a hint of things to come. america's growth, the prospering of the adventurous idealism on which it was founded, these were making the united states a world power. a position of world leadership unsought but unavoidable was even then being thrust upon the

nation. this time it was no isolated conflict. this time the challenge to freedom and the involvement of free men in it were at such a scale that a name never used before in man's history was created to drive it -- the world war. from our perspective in history, the first world war. but for the doughboy in hundreds of thousands, it was world war. on a personal level, it was perhaps very little different from any war any time. >> where did that sergeant guy? we're due move out any -- >> w