{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.young.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/video-young-honors-hoosier-veteran-alvin-forney-in-floor-speech/", "VIDEO: Young Honors Hoosier Veteran Alvin Forney in Floor Speech", "2022-11-14", "2022", "2022-11", "Republican", "Senate", "IN", "Todd Young", "Y000064", "www.young.senate.gov", "toddyoung", "https://www.young.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/", "scraper", "WASHINGTON \u2013 Today, U.S. Senator Todd Young (R-Ind.) spoke on the Senate floor about the life and legacy of Corporal Alvin Forney, a Marine from Indianapolis who made the ultimate sacrifice for our nation on September 1, 1965. Young recently met Corporal Forney\u2019s sister, Mary, and learned about Corporal Forney\u2019s story.\n\nIn his remarks, Young praised Forney and all of our veterans for their service and commitment to freedom\u2019s cause.\n\nTo watch the full floor speech, click here.\n\nSenator Young\u2019s full remarks, as prepared for delivery:\n\nPanel 2E, row 71.\n\nNot long ago, a young lady visited the Vietnam Veterans Memorial during a trip to Washington, DC.\n\nShe walked along the wall, searching the black granite panels.\n\nThen she saw the name right there in front of her.\n\nShe stopped and pressed her hand against it\u2026\n\nIt was panel 2E, row 71: Alvin C. Forney.\n\n\u2014\n\nAcross our country \u2014 not just on our National Mall but on the boulevards of our state capitals and in the squares of our small towns, there are names of brave Americans etched in memorials, the names of those who never came home.\n\nAnd there are those who did come home, whose names may not be on monuments, but whose example of service and sacrifice for their country is no less inspiring.\n\nFor two and a half centuries, they have answered the calls, they have protected our freedoms, they have placed their lives in the line of fire oceans away, so their countrymen can live theirs in peace here at home.\n\nThey are the citizen soldiers who defeated a king\u2019s army, who ended the scourge of slavery, who saved western civilization and liberated concentration camps, who stood down communism and stand vigil against terrorism.\n\nThey are more than just names though, they are the spirit of this country: strong but merciful, forever guarding our freedoms and devoted to our fellow citizen.\n\nCorporal Alvin Forney lived this example out in his short life.\n\nHe seemed destined, no matter his path, to make a difference.\n\nAnd he did.\n\nTall, handsome with a bright smile and infectious optimism, he was an ace athlete\u2026a football, track and basketball star at Shortridge and Washington high schools in Indianapolis.\n\nA member of a military family, Corporal Forney enlisted in the Marine Corps in 1961 and went west.\n\nHe graduated from Marine Corps Recruit Depot, San Diego, and trained in the mountains near Camp Pendleton, enduring the forced marches and step hikes in the tarantula and rattle snake-filled scrub.\n\nSan Diego-trained Marines are sometimes, derisively, referred to as \u201cHollywood Marines\u201d by their Paris Island peers \u2013 Tinsel Town is just up the Pacific Coast Highway.\n\nBut if Hollywood did ever try to create the ideal Marine, Corporal Forney could be its muse.\n\nYou can see it in the old photos, the focus, the confident air, the spotless uniform. He looked like a Gentleman Marine, a hero.\n\nHe wasn\u2019t just courageous, or strong, he was patient and decent, slow to anger, he seldom swore\u2013 a rarity, of course, for a Marine.\n\nHe loved his family and he loved his country.\n\nAnd when he arrived in Vietnam, in the summer of 1965 as part of the third Marine Expeditionary Force, his chief concern was not for himself.\n\nIt was for his brother.\n\nArmy Sargent William Forney, the Corporal\u2019s older sibling, was departing for Vietnam.\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t mind being over here, but I worry about Bill coming over,\u201d Corporal Forney wrote their mother Minnie.\n\nWilliam had married shortly before deploying, and Corporal Forney was concerned about his brother\u2019s separation from his new bride.\n\nShortly after that letter arrived, a military car pulled into the driveway, and a telegraph from the Department of Defense came:\n\nCorporal Forney had been struck by fragments of a mine during a patrol and killed in action near Da Nang.\n\nIt was September 1, 1965. He was twenty-two years old.\n\nHe was awarded the Purple Heart and laid to rest in Indianapolis\u2019 Crown Hill Cemetery, among a president and vice presidents, poets, businessmen and inventors \u2013 and not at all out of place.\n\nEvery September, until the day she died, Corporal Forney\u2019s mother visited his grave.\n\nBeneath the words \u201cBeloved Son and Brother,\u201d and after the mention of Vietnam, his headstone reads \u201cthe first casualty from Indianapolis.\u201d\n\nWhich he was. But simply a statistic, he was not.\n\nIt was half a century later that that young lady came to the Wall in search of Corporal Forney\u2019s name.\n\nShe came because her grandfather asked her to.\n\nFifty years earlier he had served with Corporal Forney at Naval Air Engineering Station at Lakehurst in New Jersey.\n\nAnd he never forgot him.\n\nHe could still see that squared away Marine, he could still hear his soft spoken voice.\n\nAnd he could still remember the day in September 1965 when he walked into headquarters at Lakehurst and saw the secretaries crying, and heard the news: Corporal Forney had been killed in action in Vietnam.\n\nAnd the Corporal\u2019s family too, they never forgot him.\n\nHe\u2019s still in their hearts.\n\nHis younger siblings and cousins, they still remember the days before he left for Vietnam\u2026how kind, loving and protective he was. The memories of the dinners he treated them to, of his popping his fingers and whistling, his enthusiasm and joy.\n\nIn September I met Mary Allen, Corporal Forney\u2019s younger sister on a flight back to Indiana. She shared his story and asked that I remember him.\n\nI will.\n\nOf course, on Veterans Day, which just passed, we remember all those who wore the uniform, who pledged their lives to freedom\u2019s cause.\n\nYes, because they are owed our grateful devotion, our eternal gratitude, every day \u2014 not one day in November.\n\nBeyond that though, to forget them, to take them for granted, would be a form of national self-destruction.\n\nDecades pass, generations come and go, and values change.\n\nIn many ways that is the natural course of a society in search of a more perfect union.\n\nBut those who have defended that Union carry with them unbending values essential to a democracy.\n\nOur veterans set an example.\n\nThey are a monument to the values at the heart of this experiment in liberty.\n\nService and sacrifice.\n\nHumility and honor.\n\nLoyalty to country and love of countryman.\n\nDedication to others and to causes greater than one\u2019s self.\n\n\u2014\n\nPanel 2E, row 71.\n\nWhen that young woman went to the Wall, in search of Panel 2E, row 71, it was not just because her grandfather had served with Alvin Forney.\n\nIt was because, as her grandfather said, he set an example all Americans should be proud to follow.\n\nWithout citizens like Corporal Forney, there is no America.\n\nHe is not forgotten.\n\nNone of our veterans, or the example they set, are.\n\nNor will they ever be.", 1, "2026-03-30T01:40:41Z", "2026-04-06T18:38:01Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://www.young.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/video-young-honors-hoosier-veteran-alvin-forney-in-floor-speech/"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 2.1022469736635685, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}