Rep. Liz Loomis floor speech on National Guard Day

January 18, 2008

Thank you Mr. Speaker,
and thank you members of this House.

Our state's founders thought it was important
to make sure the people in this chamber
were citizen-lawmakers,
not professional politicians.

Today, we citizen-lawmakers salute the
nine-thousand citizen-soldiers
in Washington state's National Guard. 

These men and women are farmers
and firefighters and teachers and small business owners.

They don't do it for fame or fortune.
Nobody gets rich serving in the National Guard. 

Nobody signs up and goes to boot camp,
 -- to do push ups and crawl in the mud
and find their physical limits --
without being motivated by something deeper,
something you can't measure with a paycheck.

When there's a flood, it's these citizen-soldiers
who drive Humvees full of sandbags,
and fly helicopters to pluck families from rooftops.

When there's a wildfire,
they pick up their shovels.

When there's a windstorm,
they show up with truckloads of food.

The National Guard is about
neighbors helping neighbors. 

We have a proud tradition of doing that out West.
When pioneers settled here,
they couldn't hire a builder to put up a new barn
-- they got their friends and family together
and had a barn-raising party. 

Now, many of our National Guard have been
called up to serve full-time, to take up arms in war.
They've left their families and their jobs behind.
Some -- too many -- will never come home.
And whatever people think about the war,
we all have a duty to honor our warriors. 

So I could not be more proud of our citizen soldiers,
and I could not be happier than the first time I stand up
in this chamber, in the Peoples' House, is to honor
their service and sacrifice. 

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Photographs

Related Links

Audio of Rep. Loomis' speech (Right Click to Save)