Thanks. I have been looking forward to this for a couple of years now, no exaggeration.
My schedule has been quite busy, but Chaplain Phillips and I started
these discussions about two years ago and to be honest with you,
I am a huge fan of this institution because I am an avid reader, a lover of history.
This institution—the leaders that this institution has created and what they
have done for our country over more than a hundred years.
This institution has always meant a great deal to me, so this is my first chance ever
to get to VMI and I am so glad to be with y'all tonight.
As you just heard, I have a lot
of combat experience, so if you don't mind,
I'll just tell some war stories tonight. How does that sound? Does that sound all right?
Many of you saw the clip that was scrolling for just a few moments
before this evening began from
the movie Black Hawk Down.
Just, if you don't mind, humor me for a second—show of hands—how many of you in this room have
not seen the movie Black Hawk Down? Okay. I heard that it just was released on
Netflix, so if you want to watch it for
free, you can go watch it on Netflix, but
I will tell you a quick story that kind
of picks up where this little clip left
off from the movie Black Hawk Down. I'm
in Mogadishu, Somalia, in the summer of 1993.
As you've heard just a moment ago,
I'm one of those guys that has been in
the Ranger regiment basically from the
time that I enlisted in the Army.
My first assignment is the Ranger regiment, and I was assigned to the Ranger regiment
as a private, was sent to the invasion of Panama as a young sergeant in 1991.
I'm a staff sergeant in Desert Storm in '89. I'm a sergeant in Panama in '91.
I'm a staff sergeant in Desert Storm, so by the time that I get to Somalia,
I have more combat experience
than most of the guys in the Ranger
regiment, and Somalia, for us, was—by the
way, our unit was training at the time in Texas.
We were doing this joint readiness
exercise, and we got a phone call
to stop what we were
doing, get on airplanes, fly to the East
Coast, and start to prepare for a mission
that we didn't know what it would foretell.
At the national command level, there was a lot of discussions about whether
or not Task Force Ranger would actually be sent to Somalia.
Here's a quick bit of trivia for
you: there was an argument between the
United States Special Operations Command and the president of the United States
about whether or not Task Force Ranger
would go to Somalia, and the argument
basically ended with, "All right, we're
not gonna send them. Send everybody back
to Texas and start training again like
nothing happened." I landed back in
Texas, picked up where we left off, was
doing some training, and about 12 hours
later got notified—get back on airplanes,
fly back to the East Coast. No, you were
really going this time. Now, for most of
the guys that got kind of frustrating
for them, though for me this was old hand
because I got notified probably a dozen
times that the U.S. was going to invade
Panama before we actually invaded.
More than a few times, I packed my bags and was on airplanes getting ready to invade Panama
before we decided not to invade
Panama, and the reason why I knew the
last one was for real is because I was
supposed to be going on leave that day.
My commanders were supposed to be going on leave that day, when they basically
tore up the leave forms and said,
"Nobody's going anywhere. You're not going home.
You're going to Panama." So for me it
was old hat, to get what we would say get
all spun up,  just to take all of your kit
off, and to go sit back down and go back to training.
When we arrived in Panama,
the night that the airplanes landed and
we occupied this little base at the
airfield, Task Force Ranger was a really,
really small unit of about 400 of us,
helicopter unit and their supporters,
Special Operations forces and their
supporters, and about 112, 120 Army rangers
all in this large hangar in Mogadishu, Somalia, and I realized the first night,
In fact, I said to my men, "I'm a squad leader in Mogadishu, Somalia," and I said to my men
the first night, "This one is going to be different than Panama and then Desert
Storm because when I was in Panama, the
Panamanian Defense Forces were locking
themselves in their own handcuffs and
turning themselves in because they
wanted nothing to do with fighting
against the United States military.
If you were around in '91, even if you
weren't in Kuwait or in Iraq, you saw the
pictures of tens of thousands of Iraqi
military surrendering in mass to the U.S.
military because by the time that we
rolled across the berm and actually
started to occupy Kuwait and Iraq, those
Iraqi forces realized
that they were grossly outnumbered and had no chance of success.
The night that we arrived in Somalia, we landed at probably 5, 6 o'clock in the afternoon,
and at 9 o'clock at night, we started to get
mortared and attacked at this airfield,
and almost nightly got mortared and
attacked. I said to my men on the very
first night, "This enemy is different. This
enemy is willing to fight, and this enemy
is willing to die,"  unlike the Panamanians,
unlike the Kuwaitis, and, I mean
unlike the Iraqis, and I didn't realize
just how willing to fight they were.
So if you understand that from the book Black Hawk Down, the movie doesn't really portray
this much of the operation, but Task Force Ranger conducted seven missions in Somalia.
The last mission is the mission that makes it to the book and the movie Black Hawk Down.
As you just heard, we were sent over there as a Special Operations Task Force
to take down a clan that was really creating all of the instability,
and, ultimately, to remove the clan leader, Mohammed Farrah Aidid.
So Task Force Ranger is starting to be
effective. We're starting to take down
some pretty important people in the clan,
and each of the missions that we're
doing is a little bit more difficult.
Those missions are starting to become a
little bit more dangerous, and I'm
telling you this because I think you
ought to understand the logic behind the
decision to launch the task force on
October 3rd, 1993, because this is a
daylight raid into the very center of
the town that is controlled by Mohamed
Farrah Aidid. These seven warlords that
controlled the town, each had kind of
pockets where this is their part of town,
you don't go in my part of town unless
we let you in my part of town, and we
were about to go kick in the front door
of Mohamed Farrah Aidid's part of town in
the middle of the daylight, which is
incredibly unusual for special
operations forces at this time. The reason
why—there are several factors that
caused us to make this decision, and
ultimately, it was the Task Force
commander, Major General William
Garrison's decision to launch Task Force Ranger
on a daring daylight raid into the very heart of town where Aidid and his task force was.
A couple of things were at play. One, we had been in the
country now for about three months on
what we thought was really going to be
about a six- or an eight-week operation,
and it was going much slower than we
thought it was going to be. But really,
the part that the book doesn't depict,
the movie really doesn't show you, is how
much pressure we were getting from the
Clinton administration and from the
White House to wrap this thing up.
We were getting immense pressure—get this thing over with and get out of Somalia
because the news is starting to equate
Somalia with Vietnam,
and it's costing the administration in public opinion points.
So we get a tip on Sunday afternoon that two really high-ranking leaders are
meeting in the same building at the same time in the very center of the Aidid part of town,
and we knew this was a really, really dangerous scenario.
We also knew that if we get in there, there's a very small contingency force of the U.S. Army's
10th Mountain Division that may be able to provide a quick reaction force, but once you're in there,
you have no reserves. This is it.There's no backup. You're in there and it's up to you to get yourself out.
So Task Force Ranger launches a mission to go get these two guys.
Special operators fly in on little bird helicopters
very much like you see in
the movie Black Hawk Down.
Rangers fly in on Blackhawks and slide
down ropes and provide blocking
positions at the four corners of the
target building. Not going to talk you
through the whole tactical operation, but
I will say when those Rangers are
sliding down the fast ropes from the
Black Hawk helicopters—we don't really
know what happened to this day—one of
those Rangers, Todd Blackburn, missed the
the fast rope, and he fell about 70 feet, and he landed in the city streets headfirst.
So my company commander started to call me on the radio, got the message back to the battalion
commander who was right there with me and said, "Hey, Todd Blackburn is seriously wounded.
He may not even make it out of the city streets. We need to get him immediate medical attention."
I took my Humvees up to get to Blackburn,
who was already unconscious, bleeding
from his nose and his mouth, and placed
him on a stretcher with a couple of our
medics working on him just trying to
keep Blackburn alive, and my commander
made the decision to send me and my
squad—10 men on two Humvees—to escort
Blackburn out of the target building,
get him immediate medical attention.
Now we were getting shot at on this target building, unlike the other objectives
that we've done in Somalia, almost the
moment that we arrive, but to be frank with you,
most of the small arms fire wasn't really effective on any of the targets that we did.
In fact, it was pretty ineffective, and the bullets were going over my head,
but they were going well over my head. I really wasn't that worried about the small arms fire.
I was more concerned about Blackburn's head and neck injuries, and how poor those
road conditions were in Mogadishu. See,
the Somali clans had been hiding
roadside bombs in the middle of the road
in potholes, covering them up with some
debris, and as soon as we drove down the
roads, they set those those roadside
bombs off underneath our vehicles in
order to try to blow those vehicles up,
because the roads didn't exist, basically—just dirt with holes in them,
so I instructed the guy who was driving my Humvee, I split my men up into two vehicles—
put myself and half of my squad on the lead vehicle—put the rest of my guys on
the trail vehicle and had Todd Blackburn in a cargo Humvee in the middle—
three vehicles leaving the target building after being there for only about 10 minutes.
I instructed the guy who was driving my Humvee to drive really slowly and to avoid
as many bumps and potholes as possible. We're driving about ten or 15 miles an hour.
We drive by the target building, and we make a right turn onto Hawadig road,
and this is the scene that you see from Black Hawk Down. When we turned this corner on this
really narrow road, 10, 15 meters wide, this three-vehicle convoy started to get engaged
from about 200 different directions at the same time. Now, when I say this, I'm talking about
RPGs from 20 feet away and hand grenades from rooftops and small arms fire on automatic
from point-blank range on these three Humvees as we're driving down the road,
and one of the Somali gunmen is on the right side of the road,
down the road, hiding, waiting for us.
We're getting hit from every direction.
We've got a guy who's 18 years old, who's
never been in, who hasn't been in the
Army for a year, who's operating a 50-
caliber machine gun on top of my Humvee,
spraying bullets everywhere, trying to
return fire in 360 directions at once.
Because he wasn't being very effective
that way, I told him, Brad Paulson, to take
his 50-cal, point to the left side of the
Humvee and pick up all of
the Somali gunmen on the left side of the Humvee.
There was another machine gunner sitting
in the back of my Humvee named Dominic
Pilla, and I told Pilla to take his
machine gun, face it to the right side of
the vehicle, pick up all of the Somali
government on the right side.
I'll take care of everybody in the front.
Tim Moynihan, another guy in my Humvee,
will take care of everybody behind us,
and now we're just trying to keep each
other alive long enough to make it back to the base.
Now the movie deliberately downplays
some of the violence. I guess you should
know this. The movie was very close to an
X rating for violence when it was
released as it is, so it doesn't depict
just how violent this scene really was.
But as we're driving down the road, we're
getting hit from point-blank range from
200 directions at the same time, and
we're trying to engage fire and trying
to keep each other alive, and we're
driving at maybe 20-25 miles an hour, and
one of these Somali gunmen that's down on the right side of the road sees Dominick
Pilla sitting right behind me at the
same time that Pilla sees him.
Now these two guys turned their weapons to each other at the same moment, and they shoot
and kill each other at the exact same
instant. Unlike the movie, Dominick Pilla
was shot in the forehead just above his
ballistics helmet. He took a massive head
wound, and he was killed instantly, and he
fell over into the lap of Specialist Tim
Moynihan, and then Moynihan began to
panic and started to scream my name out,
"Sergeant Struecker, Pilla's has been hit! He's been killed!" and when I looked over the
back of my shoulder, it was like the back
of that whole Humvee had just been
painted red with Dominick Pilla's blood,
and now as a combat leader I want you to
hear something because I'm not ashamed
to admit at this moment I started to get
terrified for my own life. I started to
think about my men, and think, "Uh-oh, we're
all going to die in the next few seconds.
The math says that we're not going to
make it out of the city streets alive.
And then the very next thing that
started to cross over my mind is,  "Jeff,
you're a leader of this small patrol.
You better get yourself under control if
you're going to be able to get your men
under control,"  and so as calmly as I was able to, I told Tim Moynihan to take his weapon,
turn to the right side of the Humvee, pick up Dominick Pilla's sector of fire
and kill as many bad guys as possible if we're gonna have any chance of survival.
We go through a number of other obstacles. I don't even want to talk about all of them tonight because it
would take too long, but when we finally
made it back to the base, the scene back
there is total chaos, and I mean people
are rushing everywhere. We're spinning up
helicopters. We're trying to get more
Humvees ready to go back out into the
city streets. I pulled back in, letting
the Task Force operations know that I've
got a guy who's killed in action, and
another guy who's very seriously wounded
in action on these vehicles that are now
shot to pieces. There's a guy who's
basically—he's totally calm while
everybody else is freaking out around us
as soon as we pulled back in that day. In
fact, he's almost waiting for me as soon
as I pull back into the airfield, and I'm
looking for him in this room because I
hope that I was going to be able to see
him tonight. Is Dr. Marsh here tonight?
Is he here? Hey, would you stand up for
just a second—because that man right
there is solely responsible for Todd
Blackburn still being alive.
Thank you very much, Dr.  Rob Marsh.
I was amazed by his self-control, and
frankly, it was your self-control that
that caused me to to start to get
things under control a little bit when I
saw you as soon as we arrived that night.
And he didn't save just Todd Blackburn,
There are several other men from Task
Force Ranger that are still alive tonight
because of him. Thank you, Dr. Marsh, for what you did for us over there.
So as soon as we arrived back at the base—I want to
talk to you about courageous leadership
from the perspective of one of the
men that's on the back of my Humvee—his
name is Brad Thomas. Because as soon as
we get back to the base—you see this
scene in the movie Black Hawk Down.
My Humvee's completely shot to pieces. We're basically low on ammunition, and my
platoon leader, Lt. Larry Morris,
walked up to me and he said,
"Jeff, a second Black Hawk helicopter just got shot down."
Now, I didn't know the first Black Hawk went down because I was still busy just trying to get out of the city
streets and get Blackburn back to the
base, and he said, "We've already put the
search and rescue force in at the Cliff
Wolcott crash site. Mike Durant's
helicopter just crashed in the city. We
don't have anybody else who could go
back out there I need you to get your
men on your Humvees and get them ready
to go back out into the city streets. One
of the special operators who was riding
back with me overheard this conversation,
and he kind of stepped off to the side
with me— He's like, "Hey, sergeant, if you're
really going to go back onto the city
streets tonight, don't leave your men
sitting in the back of your Humvee in
all of that blood." He said, "That will have
serious psychological effects on them.
What you probably need to do is to go
clean this Humvee up before you go back
out of those city streets." Now we didn't
have running water, so I sent all of the
rest of my guys—go get some more fuel,
get some more ammunition, get the
vehicles ready to go back out in the
streets, and I've pulled this one Humvee
off to the side with buckets and brushes—
started to clean the back of my Humvee
up and get it ready to go back out in
those city streets, and I will tell you
without any hesitation, this was the most
terrifying moment of my life
because everything inside of me was saying, "Jeff, if you go back out there
you will die tonight, and as a leader, if you drive your men back through this—
Dominick Pilla is the first guy killed in action in the task force at this point.
You've just got one guy killed. If you drive the rest of your men back through what
you just went through, every one of them will die tonight."
And I was thinking to myself, this is no exaggeration. This is a suicide mission.
If we're gonna go back on those city streets, all of us are gonna die,
and I'm trying to figure out, how do I get myself under control, and I'm trying
to figure out how do I get myself ready to go back out into those city streets,
and I'm cleaning this blood up off of the back of this Humvee, getting ready
to go back out in the city streets, and one of the officers from our unit, Maj. Craig Nixon, grabs me and he tells me
something that I wasn't aware of. He said, "Jeff, have you ever been on a hot LZ?"
I said, "Well, yeah, in Panama." He's like, "No, have you ever gone into the exact same hot
LZ that you just came out of?" and I said, "No." He said, "I have, and it's no fun, and let me
tell you, it's hard to lead men into a firefight. It's exceptionally hard to lead them back
into the firefight that you just came out of, and this is exactly what we're asking you to do, Jeff.
Get your men ready to go out into those city streets with you. I don't know if he could read minds,
but one of the guys from my unit, Brad
Thomas, and this is the guy that I want
you to put yourself in his shoes for
just a second—when we get ready to go
back out in the city streets, we're not
exactly sure where Mike Durant's
helicopter crashed. In fact, the best that
I could get from my bosses, hey it's
somewhere in here. We don't even have a
map. We have a satellite photo.
It's somewhere in here, but don't worry about it because there's helicopters in the sky.
They'll tell you where to turn. They'll take you right to the crash site, Jeff.
I'm getting my guys ready to get on
the Humvees and go back out of the city
streets, and one of my men, Specialist
Brad Thomas, walked up to me, and he said,
"Hey, sergeant, I can't go back out there with you tonight. I've got a wife at home, and I know
I'm gonna die if I go back out there, and so, I basically just need to sit this one out."
Now I just want you to understand something.
If you're not familiar with the Ranger regiment and the kind of combat warriors
that the Ranger regiment creates, it is unheard of that
a ranger would look another ranger
in the eyes and say, "I can't do this."
But he was thinking exactly what I was
feeling in my own heart, and probably
what everybody else was feeling like.
This is a suicide mission. We're all
gonna die. He was the only guy that was
willing to just say it out loud, so this
moment now I'm in a bit of a ethical
conundrum or a leadership challenge, as I
like to put it, because I have all of the
authority with my position and by my
rank to order this man to get back on
the Humvees and to drive back out in
those city streets, but I knew ordering
him to do it may be counterproductive.
So before I explain to you how this
situation went any farther, I just want
to ask you for a second—you put yourself in Brad Thomas's shoes right now.
Got a brand-new wife at home,
relatively new to the Army, just got a
chance to see one of your best friends
get his head almost blown all the way
off in Somalia, and you know without a
shadow of a doubt, this is going to
happen to you if you go back out in
those Humvees. Let me ask you for just a
second, those of you who are about to
become combat leaders, those of you cadets
in this room—what moves a man to get
back on those Humvees? Is it raw power:
I'm your boss. You're gonna do what I
tell you to do, whether you want to do it
or not. Is that gonna move a guy to get
on those Humvees and to give his life if
necessary? And now I'm going to do a
little audience interaction for just a
second because I tell this part of the
talk at corporations, college campuses,
civic events, all over America because I
don't think most people understand the
the levers that really move a man when
he knows deep in his heart if I go do
what you're asking me to do, I'm gonna
die. So you tell me what
that would motivate a guy to get back on
a Humvee and to drive back out there?
What is it? He just said, "Your buddies." The answer to the question—let me tell
you what the answer is not. It's not the flag. Now Brad Thomas is a patriot.
He loves our country.
He enlisted and chose the most difficult
assignment in the Army, to serve as a
private in the Ranger regiment.
You wouldn't do that if you weren't a
patriot, and you didn't love your country,
but patriotism doesn't cause you to go
willingly to your death. Let me tell you
what also doesn't do it. It's not the awards and the glory for this, actions in combat,
because you know who's going to get those awards?
You're not going to. They're gonna give
them to your family at Arlington National Cemetery.
Awards and glory doesn't move a man or a woman to go do some selfless act
that probably will cost them their life on the battlefield,
and the part that I don't think a lot of
leaders in America understand is the
thing that will move a man or a woman to
do something like this is love. It's love
for your buddies. You see, what I said to
Thomas next is, "Look, man, I need you on
those Humvees. But your friends are still
out there, and they need you, and if we
don't roll back out of these city streets, chances are, none of them are gonna make it back alive."
And one of the people that I am most proud of, this guy deserves to be in the movie Black Hawk Down.
This scene in the movie Black Hawk Down
is where Thomas rolls up to me and says,
"I can't do that, sergeant. I can't go back
out there," and after a very short
conversation with him, I look in my
rearview mirror as we're getting ready
to drive away, and I watch him reach down
and pick up his squad automatic weapon,
get on the back of the last Humvee and
roll back out into those city streets
with me, not once but multiple times, and
spend all night long on those city
streets, expecting in any second that he
would get killed for going back out there,
but willing to do it because he loves
those men that are out in those city
streets and is willing to exchange his
life for theirs. When you start talking
about the ethics of courageous
leadership, especially on the battlefield,
when you start talking about leading men
and women to their death,
you know, they know, if I go do what you
tell me to do, boss, I very well may die
for this. You know that. They know that. I
want you to keep this in the back of
your mind—just tuck this away in your
tool belt. It's not glory. It's not patriotism.
It's ultimately going to be their love for the mission and their loyalty to the leader
that causes them to get on the back of a Humvee or to go charge a machine-gun nest
or to go take hamburger hill or to go assault those beaches on June 6, 1944.
That's the thing that's going to cause men and women to go do the kind of feats of
valor that our country has produced men and women to do.
Loyalty is the currency that allows a leader to lead with courage on the battlefield.
Loyalty is the currency that allows somebody to lead with courage in a boardroom.
It's the currency that allows somebody to lead with courage in their own living room
or in their kitchen, and the kind of person that has integrity that you trust
is the kind of person that's going to develop your loyalty, and when they've got your loyalty
now they can really make some courageous moves.
By the way, we're not just talking about physical courage—the willingness to put your life
on the line. Give you a quick example— this also applies to moral courage as well,
and by that, I mean the ability to say what needs to be said when nobody
else is willing to say it. There was a very tense conversation in the Oval Office with the president
of the United States, and this tense conversation was with the highest-level leaders.
By the way, I'm not talking about President Trump.  I'm talking about 1933, George C. Marshall.
I mean Douglas MacArthur and Franklin
Delano Roosevelt, in MacArthur's own words.
I want you to listen to how this
conversation went in 1933 in the Oval Office.
This is what MacArthur said. He
said, "I felt it my duty to take up the
cudgels. The country's safety was at
stake," and I said so bluntly.  The president
turned his full vials of his sarcasm upon me. He was a scorcher when aroused,
and the tension began to boil
over. For the third and final time in my
life, that—listen to what he says next—
that paralyzing nausea began to creep over me.
In my emotional exhaustion,
I spoke recklessly to the president of
the United States, and said something to
the general effect that when we lost the
next war—this is 1933—when we lose the
next war, and an American boy is lying in
the mud with an enemy bayonet through
his belly and an enemy foot on his dying throat
and spat out the last curse, I wanted his curse to be Franklin Roosevelt, not Douglas MacArthur.
The president was livid. He said in front of everybody, "You must not talk that way to the
president of the United States," and he
was right, of course,
and I knew it almost as soon as the
words left my mouth. I said I was sorry,
and I apologized, but I felt my career
was at an end. Listen to what Douglas
MacArthur does next. I felt my career was
at an end, and I told him, "You have my
resignation as chief of staff of the
Army. If you are unwilling to bend, Mr.
President, you have my resignation." As I
reach for the door, his voice came with
me with cool detachment that reflected
his extraordinary self-control. He said,
"Douglas, don't be foolish. You and the budget guys can get together."
Basically, the budget was being decimated in the U.S. military,
and MacArthur said, "I will resign before
I let this continue."  He said, "Don't be
foolish, Douglas. You and the budget guys
must get this together ,and then Dern,
MacArthur's chief of staff, shortly
reached my side, and I could hear his
gleeful tones. Well,  we're walking out the
door. His chief of staff said to him,
"You have just saved the Army."  Now listen to what MacArthur says he does next.
He's walking out of the doors of the White
House, and as soon as he gets to the steps,
he vomits because of the emotional
fear that he had been dealing with in the Oval Office.
You see, MacArthur decided, this is it. If this is one of those lose my career moments,
than I am going to lose my career before I let the nation decimate the military
and we're not ready—1933 —for the next war.  But don't be the person who automatically
goes to the end and says, " Yeah, but look at what MacArthur did—he saved the Army and perhaps he
saved the nation because he found, he convinced, the president to provide the money to
resource the military." No, no—pay close
attention to what MacArthur said: "I had
this nausea in my stomach that was so
severe that when I walked out of the
Oval Office that day I vomited on the
steps of the White House because I was
so scared of what I just did."  You see,
when I talk about leadership, courage,
it's not just your willingness to stand
up and to face the bombs and the bullets
on a battlefield. Sometimes the greatest
courage is the willingness to stand up
and to confront somebody at work or in
your neighborhood or in a classroom
in your office who nobody else in
the room is willing to stand up, and
you don't want to do it, but nobody else is
willing to and you decide all right,
this is one of those issues where I'm going to have to stand up and make a stand.
This, in my opinion, is the essence of
leadership courage. It comes from within,
and then it starts to infiltrate or it
starts to resonate to the people around
you, and when they see you stand up,
they're willing to step up because they
believe in you. They trust you. They're
developing some loyalty to you. They will
follow you even to their own death, if
they know you're going with them. This is
the essence of combat leadership. This is
the essence of courageous leadership, and
it's not just found on the battlefield.
Sometimes it's found in the living room.
Sometimes it's found in the boardroom,
and my challenge to you, all of you,
whatever walk of life that you come from,
is be the kind of man or woman that the
folks that are following you say, "I will
follow that man. I will follow that woman,
even to my death, because I believe in them." You have a man in the back of the room who I would trust
and follow, Dr. Rob Marsh, to my death if he asked it because I believe in that man
and who he is and what he stands for— not just him but his family's commitment to
our country. So I just want to say to you, "Thank you so much for your attention tonight."
Thanks for giving me the opportunity to come and speak to you,  and I think if we have a few moments,
I'll answer some questions for you, but thank you so much for the
chance to be with you all tonight, and God bless you.
 
