What follows are the remarks from my promotion ceremony on 29 April, 2022. For context, the ceremony took place at the Museum of the American Revolution in Yorktown, Virginia. Hence the references to the Battle of Yorktown.
Good afternoon, and thank you all for coming here.
First let me say thank you to Derrick for officiating this promotion, and for all the kind words. One of the nice aspects of promoting to colonel is you get to do it the way you want, and i could not think of a better option than having a peer and a friend do this. We don’t succeed by ourselves, we succeed with the help of family and friends in our lives.
Second, thank you to everyone who made it out here today. Some of you live close by, others came from far away, by plane, by train, and by automobile, and somewhere there is a comedy sketch waiting to be written on that dynamic.
Before I thank some others, I wanted to talk about success and failure. It’s been 22 years since I commissioned at Norwich as a second lieutenant, and 27 years and couple months since i raised my right hand and took an oath of enlistment at the Fort Hamilton MEPS. I like to think I have had a successful career, and some things in life have gotten me thinking about that topic.
We are here at Yorktown which serves as a metaphor in so many ways. And if I were to give credit to one aspect that led to victory it would be this, the Americans fighting on the battlefield about a mile from here knew what they were fighting for, and they loved what they knew. I’ll return to that.
But first let me talk about failure. When you fail, you fail alone. You fail when you make decisions without anyone else’s input. You fail when you try to solve problems without asking for help.
Second, as the author and professor Mark Edmundson once wrote, failure tends to happen all at once. The brakes in the car give out, the stroller slips out of your hands and rolls down the stairs, the other team scores five goals, you lose a set 6-0. Careers are lost with a DUI after a one night bender, relationships are destroyed with a moment of infidelity. A fortune is lost in one hand at the blackjack table.
Compare failure to success, and it is not just a different result, it’s a different journey. Success is a team sport. Editors make writing tighter; friends make ideas better, family is there at every step. At the Battle of Yorktown the British fought alone, without allies and without friends. Compare the British experience with the Americans who fought alongside French soldiers and sailors, fought with Dutch weapons, and fought at the expense of Spanish silver. To paraphrase the great philosophers 50-Cent and John Lennon; you should love more than you hate, and you get by with a little help from your friends.
And while failure happens all at once, success is incremental. You cannot just show up and expect to win a hockey game, or a tennis match, you put in the hours of hard work and practice getting better in small increments. You find at the end of a hockey or tennis season, or at the end of a three-year assignment you are a different person than than you were at the start. When America effectively ended the military contest against Britain at Yorktown in 1781, the battlefield success didn’t just happen. Proceeding the final victory at Yorktown was a series of battles and campaigns throughout the continent with wins and losses. From Saratoga to Charlestown, and from Trenton to Monmouth to Cowpens. Slow incremental success.
Successful marriages do not happen with a diamond ring, and success as a parent isn’t the a on the exam or the high sat score. Success in these endeavors is the continues and persistent investment, including the ups and downs in these relationships.
In many ways life is not about the game, its about the practice. Again, we stand here at Yorktown, often credited as the battle that won the revolution. But that’s not entirely true. Winning this battle started on the fields of Valley Forge under the watchful eyes of Baron Von Steuben and what followed was a slow grind over five years. Training, fighting…slow incremental success.
Hard work and progress is what gets you from losing your first hockey game by 10 goals to outplaying and defeating the same team at the end of a season.
Hard work and progress leads you from swinging and missing at the red tennis ball to a shelf full of tennis tournament medals and trophies.
Hard work and progress moves you from one Les Mills class early on a Saturday morning to running your own personal training business with people knocking down your door to hire you.
What we are doing and celebrating here is not about what happens today, or what happened when the promotion list came out. Our celebration today is about all the small incremental steps that everyone here has been a part of for the last 27 years.
Success is being there everyday.
To mom and dad, thank you for supporting me in all my endeavors.
Sabrina and Brendan, thank you for always putting life in perspective.
Jill, thank you for riding this crazy train, and for being the rock of this family.
I love you all so very much.
I’m very lucky. Few people on this earth get to become what they always wanted to be.
I am a father, I am a husband, I am a soldier. I know what I am, and I love what I know.
Let’s eat some cake.
A family photo following the promotion.