Smithsonian Magazine includes Cornell in article

The Smithsonian Magazine published an article about William D. Leahy and his role in D-Day on June 6, 1944. The article details how shortly before the “greatest invasion of all time,” the Admiral who was Chief of Staff to the Commander in Chief was speaking at Cornell College’s Commencement ceremony.

Standing before an audience of eager graduates and their families at Cornell College, as well as newspaper photographers, the four-star admiral—by the end of the year he would become the first officer of the war to receive his fifth star, making him forever outrank his more-famous counterparts such as Dwight Eisenhower, Douglas MacArthur and George Marshall—spoke of the heavy price of freedom.

“Everybody may have peace if they are willing to pay any price for it,” he said. “Part of this any price is slavery, dishonor of your women, destruction of your homes, denial of your God. I have seen all of these abominations in other parts of the world paid as the price of not resisting invasion, and I have no thought that the inhabitants of this state of my birth have any desire for peace at that price…”

Within 24 hours, some 2,500 Americans would be killed in France. Leahy was the only man in the auditorium who knew this cataclysm was coming. Indeed, it was the very reason he was in Iowa in the first place.

Then-president of Cornell College, Russell Cole, and his wife, Arrola Cole, maintained correspondence with Leahy for the rest of Leahy’s life.

The speech was written about in The Cornellian: