I will miss my youngest daughter Taylor’s first birthday by three days and for the four months that I’m deployed, my wife, mother and children will pray every day against a phone call informing them of my injury or death.
And yet on Guam, this kind of sacrifice is not unique. Today in a time of too few heroes and too much cynicism, when so many are searching for purpose and the signs of hope — hundreds of Guam’s sons and daughters stand on the watchtower of freedom keeping us safe.
If they can risk their lives, if they can miss Thanksgiving or Christmas, if their children have to miss them on their birthdays, then I cannot stand by in the face of their duty to avoid my duty to them. American soldiers need surgeons and I am honored to be among them.
I am writing this letter to the people of Guam because I am their lt. governor; because they elected me for a full four years and because they deserve to know why I am leaving to serve in a war that my title as lt. governor of Guam gave me the option to avoid. The answer is simple: Until every one of Guam’s servicemen is given the same opportunity, I will not ask any other man and his family to serve or sacrifice in my place.
Though I will not use my title as lt. governor to avoid my duty, I will use that title to ask you to pray for our servicemen around the world, to honor those who sacrificed their lives, to pay for our way of life and to remember that the glory of our nation is not in power or prestige, in wealth or in might, but in our willingness to labor for the freedom and equality that bind this nation together, acknowledging always that in every generation these gifts were purchased by honest men and women, who did their duty in spite of its cost.
God bless Guam and the United States of America.
MICHAEL CRUZ
Lieutenant Governor
U.S. Territory of Guam
