 President, the Honorable Casper W. Weinberger, Secretary of – ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States. Ladies and gentlemen, please be seated. This time it is my privilege to introduce the Secretary of Defense. Self-confidence, President Reagan has kept aggressors at bay and has nurtured the cause of freedom all over the world. Under his leadership, America is once again a beacon of strength and hope. And the President's presence here today, which we deeply appreciate, sir, exemplifies his steadfast commitment to the nation's uniformed services. President Reagan embodies the American spirit that inspired you young doctors and other idealists like you to serve your fellow citizens and to work toward a better life for us all. Ladies and gentlemen, our Commander-in-Chief, the President of the United States. Thank you very much. And Secretary Weinberger and Chairman Olsch, Dean Sanford, members of the graduating class, ladies and gentlemen, I must tell you before I start how relieved I was when Dean Sanford told me that I was going to walk on after the procession. I thought that I was going to come in with the Dean and with his reputation, I'd been afraid that the good news was that we might perch on the backstage rafters and rappelian and the bad news that we'd jump from 10,000 feet. But it's a pleasure to be here to welcome you, the graduates of this, the West Point, Annapolis, and Colorado Springs for physicians into your new profession as military and public health service doctors. You know, I hope you won't mind if I pause for a minute, but that reminds me of something that my age everything reminds you of something. People will be calling you doctor. They're all kinds of doctors. I'm even one kind of doctor. Last week, down at Tuskegee University at the commencement there, I was awarded an honorary degree. I am a doctor of laws now. And I told them at that time that they had compounded a sense of guilt I had nursed for some 55 years because I always was suspicious that the first degree I got when I graduated from college was honorary. I was devoted to some other activities such as football and swimming and campus dramatics. And I've often wondered since if I'd spent more time and worked harder as a student, how far I might have gone. But seriously, there's no doubt about what you with your hard work have accomplished. The British poet Robert Louis Stevenson once said, There are men and classes of men that stand out, the soldier and the sailor not unfrequently, and the physician almost as a rule. Well, today you become both soldier, sailor, or airman and physician. Today you enter one of the oldest and most honored ranks in the service of America's freedom. Today you take up the flag once carried by men like Army Major Walter Reed, Rear Admiral Edward Stitt, Air Force Major General Harry Armstrong, and Public Health Service Surgeon Joseph Goldberger. Yes, ever since, the Continental Congress established the Army and Navy Medical Services in 1775. Patriots like these men and women, like you, have carried their powers of healing onto the battlefields and to swamps and deserts and mountains and plains all around the world. Their accomplishments reach into almost every area of medicine. For almost a century, for example, America's uniformed services have been the world's leader in the battle against tropical diseases. They entered the fight in the jungles of Panama after Walter Reed and his team took less than a year to determine the cause of yellow fever. Today, after decades of progress, your faculty at USIS is helping military medicine to continue leading the charge. It is testing new vaccines for malaria, as well as for adult dysentery, a major tropical killer. In field after field, America's doctors in uniform have pushed forward the battle lines of medical treatment, even while under fire. Military physicians developed the use of massive blood transfusions in treating shock and trauma. They pioneered burn research and treatment. They found how man could live at higher and higher altitudes and finally in outer space itself. And again, of course, your faculty continues the tradition, leading in such areas as research on vascular surgery and reconstruction, the development of treatments for lacerated eyes, and in developing computer graphic tools for medical teaching and research. When I hear about the can-do spirit of America's doctors in uniform, it reminds me of a story about a group of Marines. I hope those of you in the other services will forgive me for telling this, but the get it done spirit applies to all of Americans' physicians in uniform. These Marines had been sent to the Army Airborne School for training and came the day for the first jump. Training officers told them the planes would come in at 1,500 feet. They would jump from the plane, hit the ground, and move south. The Marines seemed a little disturbed by this, and they went into a huddle. Then one of them as a spokesman for the group went to the officer and asked, couldn't the plane come in at 500 feet instead of 1,500? The officer explained that if they took the plane in too low, it wouldn't give them time for the parachutes to open. And he said, oh, you mean we're wearing parachutes? When America's physicians in uniform have always been leaders, and in the 10 years since its first class, USIS itself has found a place as a leader in American medicine, a leader in teaching as well as in research. As students, you went through one of the most rigorous programs in the country. You took 640 hours of training in military medicine on top of your standard curriculum. You prepared yourselves to treat patients anywhere in the world under any circumstance because yours is the only medical school in America that trains physicians to be ready for duty on the bottom of the ocean or on the surface of the moon and any place in between. Recently, the noted Houston surgeon Dr. Ken Maddox echoed the medical community's growing esteem when he said, in picking interns and residents, give me a USIS student any day. Yesterday, USIS is the kind of school that congressman F. Edward A. Baer had in mind during his 25-year crusade to establish a military university for medicine. It's helping our military become, and medicine is in so many areas, the best it's ever been. You know, among the most gratifying parts of my job is visiting our Army, Navy, and Air Force bases around the world. Time and again, I've been told that our young recruits are the best we've ever had, the best educated, the most dedicated, and I've seen it for myself. For a long time, some people said that the weak economy was the reason, but then we began on what is now 54 months of economic expansion, along the way creating over 13,600,000 jobs and still counting. Today, a greater proportion of Americans is at work than ever before in our history, and yet we're continuing to get the best recruits. A new burst of quality, that's what I've heard about USIS applicants too. USIS has also always selected outstanding classes from that first class of 32 over a decade ago to this year's entering class of 163. But I understand that the quality of the total pool of applicants from which the classes are chosen shot up six years ago, just as the quality of all those who wanted to enter the military did. And again and again, when you ask why, the answer has come back more or less the same. It has something to do with patriotism, service. It's again a proud thing to wear the uniforms of the United States. It's again a noble thing to serve in the cause of freedom and the defense of liberty around the world. There's some who say we've been in a period of me, me, me the last six years. Well, I say they should go to any American military base in the world, or they should come here today. They should meet you, America's young patriots. You're the best we've ever had. You carry on a more than 200-year-old tradition of service, and you carry it as proudly today as it has ever been carried. And that goes for your faculty as well. USIS has more than 1500 faculty members, most of them affiliated with other schools or institutions, but who donate their time to USIS donated because that's a way to serve our country. A quarter century ago, Douglas MacArthur gave his farewell address to the long gray line, the cadets of West Point. He stood in the vast hall of the academy below the balcony they call the poop deck and spoke about the soul, not just of the army, but of all the services that you now enter. The long gray line he said has never failed us. Were you to do so, a million ghosts in olive drab, in brown khaki, in blue and gray, would rise from their white crosses, thundering those magic words, duty, honor, country, duty, honor, country, the motto of West Point. Like the men and women of West Point and all of our military institutions, our physicians in uniform have never failed us. They've been ready when called, ready for hardship and sacrifice, for adventure and exploration, ready to extend the hand of compassion and healing care, ready of called to give the last full measure of their devotion. And you now join that company. You now enter the service of your country in one of the world's most honored professions, that of physician. And so, as your commander-in-chief, I say to you today, on behalf of a grateful country, good luck, congratulations, Godspeed, thank you, and God bless you. Mr. President, Mr. President, on behalf of the students, their families, the faculty, it's my privilege to present you with this memento on this occasion. We thank you very much for those stirring words, sir. Thank you. Please be seated. Ladies and gentlemen, it is now my honor to ask the president if he will present the university's major awards for 1987. These are awards in recognition of exceptional performance and contributions. The first award is the Board of Regents Award, which is the highest honor a graduating senior can receive and is presented to Ensign James Donald Bridges, Ensign Bridges. The Association of Military Surgeons Award is presented to Lieutenant Kevin Hall, class president, in recognition of his highest qualities of leadership and university involvement, Lieutenant Hall. There are two faculty awards, one for a uniformed faculty member and one for a civilian faculty member. The William P. Clements Jr. Award is presented annually to the uniformed faculty member chosen by students as their best teacher. This year's recipient is Captain Alton Leitzi of the Department of Pediatrics. Captain Leitzi. The recipient of this year's outstanding civilian educator award, again based upon student recommendation, is Dr. Gregory Mueller of the Department of Physiology, Dr. Mueller. Ladies and gentlemen, at this time, the president and the secretary must depart the president to make his regular live Saturday broadcast to the nation. Again, president, we thank you very, very much for joining us on this occasion. You have made it for all of us, in particular the class and the family.