Here's another story from the groundbreaking ceremony for the LAAFB.
The mayor of Hawthone (the city where I live) was one of the speakers, and one of the major players in getting the land-swap to happen. He put a lot of work into it, and should get a lot of the credit for the revolutionary deal.
During his speech he went on for a while about how difficult some of the meetings were between the officials at various levels of government, and then he made a joke: "I think we should all get medals of valor and purple hearts for sticking with it, even when times were tough." Now, this seemed particularly inappropriate to me considering we were at the Air Force Base and half the people in the audience were service members. There were probably people there who had earned those medals through great sacrifice, and if I had been one I might have gotten up and walked out.
