LAUNCHING OUR MISSION

We celebrated the 234th Marine Corps birthday by launching a campaign to solicit $1 million in gifts to the Semper Fi Fund. The event was held in a new building on ground that was once the runway at Glenview Naval Air Station, where many of our members made countless takeoffs and landings.

The highlight of the event was a blessing by Father John Foley, S.J., who was a teenage Marine on Okinawa in 1945. Father Foley outlined the tradition of the Marine Corps from 1775 to today, the pride Marines have in their uniform and our link to the glory of the Corps. He closed with these eloquent words:

“At times of prayer, we reflect on the cost of that glory tallied in row upon thousand rows of silent graves over whose white markers is sounded the mournful sound of taps. The dreadful cost is paid, too, by survivors, who grimly descend the ramp in painful short steps of their own or are stretcher-borne to military hospitals for rehabilitation of body and soul. Their ranks, if poised at attention, are not pretty.

The Marine veterans here this morning are determined to aid in the recovery of the impaired. We ask you, loving and Provident Father, to bless them in their noble endeavor, to bless the many benefactors of the Semper Fi Fund, and to bless the recipients who whisper “thank you” from their beds of pain.”

To read Father Foley’s blessing in full, click here.