Air Force Academy – The nation is safer today because of the military’s accomplishments in Iraq and Afghanistan, Vice President Dick Cheney told Air Force Academy graduates Wednesday.
“After 9/11, this nation made a decision: We will not sit back and wait for future attacks. We will prevent those attacks by taking the fight to the enemy,” Cheney said.
The class of 2005 had been at the academy less than three months on Sept. 11, 2001.
“All of you remember that Tuesday morning in 2001 when alarms were sounded, military bases were put on high alert and the gates of this academy were locked,” Cheney said. “Here in Colorado Springs, and at our nation’s other service academies, men and women understood immediately that a new mission had come to America, and that some of the most vital work would be carried out by your generation.”
David Edwin Conley, 22, of Waldorf, Md., was on his way to computer science class that morning when he saw on CNN the carnage at the Pentagon. His father, Air Force Col. Raymond Conley, worked there.
“When I saw where it struck – it was right in that area where he worked – the first thing I did was pray. I got down on my knees, and I prayed to God that my father was not in that building,” David Conley said.
He later reached his mother and learned that his father was on a flight to Colorado Springs to surprise him.
Conley, though, said he was still dazed by the Sept. 11 attacks. He said his instructors “brought me back and said, ‘Hey, this is why we do this.’ I was able to turn that anger, that confusion into a focus, a resolve to make sure that I graduated from here. To make sure that I become the officer that my dad would have me be.”
The class of 2005, which started with 1,269 cadets, endured some of the most tumultuous years in the history of the academy, largely because of new directives ushered in by the Agenda for Change, the Air Force’s response to a sexual assault scandal that began in 2003.
Since then, Air Force leaders have been striving to make the academy more like the operational Air Force.
“This academy that I am graduating from is a completely different one than I in-processed to,” said Travis Gramkowski, 22, of Martha’s Vineyard, Mass. “We’ve had a lot of changes here. Obviously, it’s been all over the news. … Everything I knew my freshman year, most of that has changed.”
After delivering his remarks, the vice president, wearing a cowboy hat, shook hands with each of the 906 white-gloved graduates – now second lieutenants – while family and friends in the crowd of 26,000 people waved flags and posters congratulating loved ones.
The breathtaking Thunderbirds flipped, dived and zoomed above Falcon Stadium to the delight of the crowd.
Outside Falcon Stadium at the north entrance to the academy, 20 protesters affiliated with a variety of groups, including the Pikes Peak Justice and Peace Commission and Springs Action Alliance, held up signs and banners that read “War makes Cheney rich,” “No more blood for U.S. power and oil” and “Democracy is best taught by example not by war.”
They waved and chanted at academy visitors, whose responses included ignoring the protesters, making an obscene gesture at them or acknowledging them by honking car horns and flashing peace signs.
Staff writer Annette Espinoza contributed to this report.
Staff writer Erin Emery can be reached at 719-522-1360 or eemery@denverpost.com.
