Hundreds of heroes filled the Andrew W. Mellon Auditorium in Washington on Saturday night for the Cause Veteran’s Day Benefit Gala, which raised $500,000 for the military’s wounded warriors. Fox News National Security Correspondent Jennifer Griffin, who has been involved with the organization for five years, once again served as the emcee. “This is my 5th year emceeing this extraordinary gala. We’ve all been through a lot during the past five years. Some of us have learned to live with prosthetic devices. Boy, are they making some great ones now…. I am learning to walk with mine, and I must say I love them!,” the breast cancer survivor shared.
“Sometimes people ask me what to say when they meet a wounded warrior. Thank you is a good place to start. But it’s not what you say. It’s what you do. By helping Cause you are helping an extraordinary group of volunteers make sure that when the nation’s wounded arrive at Landstuhl and Walter Reed and spend the next few months recovering — you are insuring that they have access to videos and care packages and games that help them pass their time. Tools that help them begin to pull themselves out of the natural depression that sets in once they realize what a long hard road they have before them,” Griffin told the audience.
She told Yeas & Nays the reason she became involved with the nonprofit group is because of her brother, Conor Goetz, who began volunteering for the organization at Walter Reed while he was a freshman at St. Alban’s High School. “He lost his father when he was just ten years old. At a time when only one percent of our nation has actually served in the military in the past ten years of war. As a senior, he led a charitable drive between his school and the local McDonald’s raising thousands of dollars for CAUSE and volunteered nearly every Christmas and Christmas eve at Walter Reed during high school.”
The night also included a live auction and the final showing of the Lost Heroes’ Quilt — which tells the stories of more than 50 Americans, one from each state, depicted with a photograph from their childhood and a testimony from each of their mothers. “The image of those boyhood faces staring at us with the words of their mothers embedded in the Lost Heroes’ Quilt will haunt us and push us to do better, to do more to help all of those who are wounded and are our responsibility for as long as we and they shall live,” Griffin added.
The Lost Heroes’ Quilt will be on display at the National Arlington Cemetery Museum.
