Hercules

Remarks at the dedication of the momument to Hercules employees killed on the job:

Most Americans know the story of Paul Revere’s ride, and of the battles which followed. On April 19, 1775, the King’s troops marched from Boston toward Lexington and Concord. There, the American militia gave them battle and began the American Revolution.

But fewer people know the motivation behind that British march: they wanted to seize the colonists’ supply of gunpowder. King George, like all tyrants, understood that a disarmed population can be easily subdued, and that a gun without the powder to fire it might as well be a club. Without powder, the shot heard round the world could not have been fired.

We depend upon our soldiers to defend our freedom, and that of our friends and allies, but without the war materials to support those troops, neither they, nor our freedoms, could long endure. We depend upon the men and women in uniform to preserve our liberty, and upon the willingness of others to put their lives on the line to provide our soldiers with the tools they need to fight.

While many jobs benefit our military, and many entail some element of risk, few, if any, are as directly necessary, and involve the kind of risk, as those done by the workers at Hercules. We stand here today to honor the ultimate sacrifice made by so many of them in defense of our freedom.

This was not just another job, and every man there knew it. They knew the risk. But they also knew what was at stake. And they willingly took those risks.

In September, 1940, America stood poised on the brink of war. The Nazis and the Soviets, then allies, lorded over Europe. In the Far East, Japanese armies moved against China, their naval forces threatening their neighbors. America belatedly began to awaken from its foolish isolationism. We adopted our first ever peacetime draft and increased defense production. The men who worked at Hercules knew that we would almost certainly be at war shortly, and that their product was crucial to our defense.

The cause of the explosion here has never been formally determined. Some suspected sabotage; if accurate, that demonstrates that our enemies appreciated just how crucial Hercules was to our war effort. And it would make these men among the earliest American casualties in World War Two. They are no less heros than are those men who gave their lives for their country and now rest entombed in the hulk of the Arizona.

We honor these men for sacrificing their lives for our freedom. They risked their lives for us just as certainly as did the soldiers they supported. Their efforts provided our modern patriots with the material they needed to stand against tyranny at the twentieth century’s Lexingtons and Concords. They paid with their lives for our freedom; there can be no greater gift to one’s country.

I thank you all for permitting me this opportunity to speak, and for your kind attention.