Connecticut National Guard Major General Francis J. Evon, Jr., Lt. Gov. Bysiewicz, and Gov. Lamont at Tuesday's wreath-laying ceremony.
Connecticut National Guard Sgt. Fatou Toure and Sfc. Tristan Johnson on Tuesday.
Calling on Americans to stand “arm in arm to fight an invisible enemy,” Gov. Ned Lamont commemorated the 80th anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attacks by urging a new Greatest Generation to step up for their country in the fight against Covid.
Lamont offered that call to arms Tuesday during a wreath-laying ceremony in Pearl Harbor Memorial Park at the corner of East Street and Forbes Avenue on Long Wharf in the shadow of the Pearl Harbor Memorial Bridge, better known as the “Q Bridge.”
Flanked by Lt. Gov. Susan Bysiewicz, Mayor Justin Elicker, state Department of Transportation Commissioner Joseph Giulietti, and a half-dozen uniformed members of the Connecticut National Guard, Lamont led a press conference and helped lay a red-white-blue-and-green wreath at the base of the city’s Pearl Harbor memorial.
The city and state officials held the event Tuesday morning in honor of the 80th anniversary of the surprise Japanese air attack of a U.S. naval base in Hawaii that killed more than 2,400 Americans and pushed the country into World War II. Eighteen Connecticut residents, including Army Air Force Private and New Havener George Smith, were among those who died that day.
Lt. Gov. Susan Bysiewicz.
“We take time to honor the lives, the service, and the sacrifice” of not just the 2,400 Americans killed at Pearl Harbor, but also of the 16 million who fought for this country during World War II, Bysiewicz said. “We salute the military heroes of World War II.”
Mayor Elicker.
Elicker used his times at the mic to urge Americans to confront the Covid-19 pandemic, which has seen over 780,000 Americans die so far, with a similar sense of unity and shared national purpose that led to so many enlisting to fight in World War II.
“Today, we’re facing an incredible crisis again,” Elicker said. “As we reflect on the individuals in the past who have given their lives for the nation to protect the greater good,” we should also celebrate those like the medical professionals who put themselves in harm’s way early on in the pandemic by continuing to go to work even as the novel coronavirus made landfall.
New Haven State Sen. and President Pro Tem Martin Looney.
“We saw a mobilization on a scale never seen before or since on behalf of a common cause,” New Haven State Sen. and Senate President Pro Tem Martin Looney. said about this country’s entry into World War II after Pearl Harbor.
“Too rarely do we see that now. Too frequently we see polarization that makes dialogue almost impossible.”
And Lamont singled out nurses who have continued to work at the front lines of the Covid-19 pandemic as “our Greatest Generation” who have carried on those publicly minded values that “make America great.”
Gov. Lamont.
After the ceremony had concluded, reporters pressed Lamont on the current surge in new Covid infections — and on the pending landfall of a new more contagious variant, Omicron.
“Be cautious, be careful, get the booster, and watch out for big crowds,” Lamont said about his advice at this current moment. He said he is not currently contemplating any new statewide mandates or restrictions, even as Covid cases rise.
“I’m not interested in mandates,” he said.
He said the state is, however, working on a new “digital health card” that would allow people who are vaccinated to show digitized proof of their vaccination status to store owners and restaurant owners who may choose to require that before entry.
“That’s something being asked for,” he said about a digital health card. “I’d like to be able to have that soon.”
There is a time and place for pandering and honoring Pearl Harbor is not it. I find it disrespectful and in poor taste to use this ceremony to push vaccinations and boosters, I hear enough about it on every media platform, save it.