Biden hails Bob Dole as a ‘genuine hero,’ praises courage and integrity at memorial service

Hanks celebrated Dole’s legacy at the World War II Memorial, a major installation that the late senator advocated for to honor the Americans who sacrificed their lives.

“Bob Dole called this a memorial to peace, so that all generations would remember that peace is achieved in shared labor, by shared sacrifice, by volunteering for the shared duty,” Hanks said Friday.

The Academy Award-winning actor worked with the former GOP presidential nominee to help raise money for the memorial after filming “Saving Private Ryan,” the award-winning 1998 movie about the Normandy invasion and a group of soldiers searching for a paratrooper whose brothers have been killed in action.

Savannah Guthrie, co-anchor of NBC’s “Today” show and the first speaker at the ceremony in front of the World War II memorial, described Dole’s life as “a flesh-and-blood monument to the values that we revere here.”

“We are all here this afternoon because Bob Dole stood for something. He stood for principle. He stood for dignity,” Guthrie said. “He stood for integrity. He stood for friendship. He stood for his country, that he fought and bled for.”

Guthrie added that “we met only a few years ago, and yet somehow, he and Mrs. Dole — Sen. Elizabeth — took me under their wing, embraced me and befriended me.”

How Dole came to the aid of Newt Gingrich — Dole lost the presidency to Bill Clinton in 1996 in the largest electoral college rout of the last eight presidential elections. Many Dole allies blamed another Republican for his incredibly poor showing: Newt Gingrich.

Democrats decided early, back in the summer of 1995, that Dole was the front-runner and that they would do all they could to tie the Senate majority leader to the very unpopular House speaker Gingrich, who came to power earlier that year promising a revolution but instead sank into a quagmire over attempted cuts to Medicare.

Robin Dole, Bob Dole’s daughter, shared a farewell letter he wrote with a staffer before passing.

“I make the final walk on my life’s journey. I do so without fear because I know that I will again not be walking alone. I know that God will be walking with me,” Bob Dole wrote. “I also confess that I’m a bit curious to learn if I am correct in thinking that heaven will look a lot like Kansas, and to see — like others who have gone before me — if I will still be able to vote in Chicago.”

“I do have one request to make of you,” Bob Dole continued. “Since it was dedicated in 2004, it has been my honor to go as often as I could to the World War II memorial here in Washington, D.C., to welcome and thank the World War II veterans and all veterans … Since I won’t be making that visit anymore, I hope that you will and that you will ask your children and grandchildren to visit veterans’ memorials across America and to never forget the sacrifice made not just by my generation, but by all those who wear the uniform of our country.”

Robin Dole, Bob Dole’s daughter with his first wife, Phyllis, said her father was “a giver, not a taker.”

“He cared more about others than he did about himself,” she said. “He told me he set a personal goal to help at least one person every day of his life.”

“There is no one he helped more than me,” Robin Dole added. “He’s always been there for me through thick and through thin. … He always had my back, even when I made mistakes. And believe me, I made quite a few. He believed in giving second chances, and I know that firsthand. He was my rock.”

Former Senate majority leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) remembered Dole as “literally one of the very first people to reach out” and welcome him when he joined the Senate in 1987.

“As Will Rogers put it in one of Bob’s favorite sayings, ‘It’s great to be great, but it’s far greater to be human,’” Daschle said.

While many will remember the stories of Dole’s “amazing heroics and his recovery from injury in World War II,” Daschle said, there were also lesser-known stories of how Dole faced the world with humor, humanity and humility.

Former senator Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) credited Dole with making the World War II Memorial a possibility.

“Without Bob Dole, there would not be a World War II Memorial,” the former lawmaker said Friday at Dole’s memorial service. “And again, with Bob’s help, we dedicated the Eisenhower Memorial.”

“Last year, Bob Dole understood that it was just not recognition that this greatest generation deserved,” Roberts added. “It was reflection and renewal, and it was for the greatest generation to inspire the next generation.”

As he finished eulogizing Dole, Biden urged Americans to live like his old friend did.

“As long as we see each other not as enemies, but as neighbors and colleagues, as long as we remember that we’re here not to tear down, but to build up. … As long as we remember that, Bob will be with us, always cracking a joke,” Biden said.

“Bob has taken his final journey,” the president added. “He’s sitting back now watching us. Now, it’s our job to start standing up for what’s right for America.”

“I salute you, my friend,” Biden concluded. “Your nation salutes you.”

Biden eulogized Dole as a man of courage, a “proud Republican” and a “master of the Senate” who “lived by a code of honor, and he meant it.”

In recounting Dole’s time in World War II, during which he was gravely injured, Biden said the late senator was “trying to help a fallen comrade” when enemy fire “shattered his body.”

“Bob would pass in and out of consciousness, dreaming of home as he lay bleeding in the foxhole for nearly nine hours,” Biden said. Dole, he said, went on to become a congressman, a senator, husband, father and colleague.