Roedy Rotunda naming speech

by Bill Roedy on May 5th, 2026 at Jefferson Hall Library, West Point US Military Academy

(To Superintendent LTG Steve Gilland) Thank you, sir.

(To audience) Don't you love calling people 20 years younger than you, “sir?”

So I was a little nervous about today when I heard this amazing group come together and I asked General Gilland, what should I say? And he looked at me with those nervous blue eyes that he has. He says, “Sir, whatever you do, don't try to be charming or intelligent or insightful. Instead, just be yourself.” So here I am, just being myself.

Okay, I want to start–I am going to be longer. Once again, disobeying the rules that I've been given at West Point, which I did serve on the duty of 100 hours on, you know, carrying my rifle back and forth around the area. So I'll be a little bit longer, and I'll just say I'm sorry afterwards. 

The first person I want to recognize is my partner, my life partner for life, Shatzi. I call her Shatzi. It's my wife, Alex. And who is Shatzi? Okay, ShatzI is, well, I anointed her as Chief of Staff once upon a time, and she said, “No, I'm not Chief of Staff. I'm chief of stuff.” And she has, it reminds me of the Army commercial. You may remember it a long time ago. “We get more things done before 7 a.m. than most people do all day.” That's her. That is her. And it comes right down to even today. She's actually put this whole thing together. So first and foremost, and whenever I say something, it's really us saying it. It's not just me. 

The most important thing is, I just, once again, want to thank everyone because it's such an honor to have this group come together like this. I’m not used to that at MGB. We never had that. And to see you all come together is really quite something. I am going to talk a little bit. I was given eight minutes. And I have to cover eight decades. So I'm going to talk a little bit longer. And everybody I mentioned is a mentor to me. It's quite a lucky feeling that I have, that I have so many mentors of different age groups and going from very young to older. 

I think it's fair to say, starting off right away, two mentors, the good General, the Superintendent, and General Reeves, the good Dean, and Kimberly as well. And I think it's fair to say that if it wasn't for them, I wouldn't be standing here right now. Because when you're a graduate of West Point, you kind of dip in and dip out. And I dipped out for a while when I was doing MTV around the world, I suppose. But you inspired and renewed me to come back, for Alex and I to come back. We would not be standing here right now if it wasn't for you and I think it's already been said but I'm quite certain that my professors way back when would be very surprised if they found out that my name was in the library. “Surprised” maybe is not the right word. “Shocked” is probably a better word. But hopefully they wouldn't be disappointed. 

Okay, so let's get started. Well, you've done a lot, Mark. Where's Mark? You've already done all the shoutouts, but I'm going to have to do it again if you don't mind. First and foremost is you. The AOG has been just incredible in arranging this and also working with us over time. And you have a great team. I'll start with Mike. Mike's a very humble guy. He doesn't like to be recognized. Raise your hand, Mike. Claudia, Alexandra, and the whole team work very closely with not only on this, but everything leading up to it. Where's Richard Gash? Colonel Gash. Oh, there he is. This would not have been done without you. You got it across the finish line. And we'll always be in debted. Where's Stacy? Is she here? Okay. You'll pass the message along, I trust. 

And so when we first found out about this event, I said, wow, that's really exciting. I'm going to bring 100 people. And the OG said, “No, we can't bring 100 people. We can only bring 30.” So somehow we settled on 50. And then I got Bob to come, the ambassador, and he was the 51st. I said, “Is that OK?” And they all said, “Yeah, the ambassador, he can come! He can be 51 or 52.” 

You know, the security nowadays, as you've already seen getting through, is very tight. It wasn't like that back in the day. In the 90s, you could drive through this post. It was an open post. And then 9-11 happened, and then ever since then, it's gotten tighter and tighter. Now it's really tight. But that's a necessary thing, of course. And I think that just by being here, getting through all the security checks, we were going to take a boat up to Hudson, but it didn't work. We wanted to look at all the revolutionary sites, ending up with West Point, which is one of the biggest revolutionary sites, of course, the West Point of the river, as anointed by George Washington. But we made it through. 

And I'd like to start pretty much on the legacy side. I've already introduced the Captain, the Colonel, the General. But here are the kids. OK, where are we? We're going to start, well, I'm going to start chronologically. We have Bella. We have Liam. We have Rocky, and we have Tiger. Tiger's graduating in a couple weeks, so we're very, very proud of her. I even learned from them as mentors. How did I learn? Well, they made me promise that whatever stories, you know, West Pointers have endless stories, and they said, “No longer than 30 seconds,” so you got it. Whenever I tell a story, it'll be 30 seconds. And then they made me promise that I wouldn't interrupt at the dinner table because we have debates all the time. And I like to say, well, Winston Churchill said, “Don't interrupt me when I'm interrupting you.” But I learned those two things from our beloved kids. It's our greatest production, our greatest accomplishment. We love

them all. 

Peggy, where's Peggy? Okay, so Peggy's a direct link to the legacy here because she was born during my father's first assignment. You know, he watched this movie. For those of you into 50s movies, From Here to Eternity, Burt Lancaster in Hawaii. My father said, I want to go there. Two weeks after being there, the attack happened in Pearl Harbor. Life changed for everybody. And we entered into an unimaginable, devastating war for the next four years. But Peggy was born a few weeks afterwards, and she... Well, she suggested that we watch Torah Torah Torah, which we've done many times. I used to watch it with my mom. And it's the link. It really is the link, Peggy. I'm so happy you're here. And not to be outdone, so I had a total, if you count stepsisters, six. No brothers, six stepsisters. Some sisters I haven't even met. But there's one sister that I love dearly. And the last time I saw her was about 20 years ago, and that's Allison. Where are you, Allison? Allison, there she is, right there. And she spent a lot of time with Dad, more time than I did. Excuse me. And she brought her son Devon. You served the country. You read surveillance maps. I'll never forget, when I came back from Italy, I said, you know, I just gave up my clearance, which was top secret, ATOMAL, cryptographic, because I had the codes. I asked her what she does, and she said, I can't tell you. It's not secure enough. So thank you for your service way back then. 

And Moritz, the brother-in-law, he came over from London, so I committed to reserves with him. A couple of things about my father. He did graduate in the Class of 40. He was a much better cadet than I was. He had 33 years of service. Fought in three wars: World War II, Vietnam, and Korea. Now rests in Arlington Cemetery. And my mom, she's not on the plaque, but she held a list of working jobs as a single mom after the divorce, and she should have her own plaque, really. No one knows better than those who have grown up with a single mom how tough that job is. They met in Atlantic City, where he delivered telegrams door-to-door, knocking on doors, giving telegrams. My mom answered the family's telegram in Atlantic City, and that was that. They got married. Love at first sight. And it was just from knocking on doors with a telegram. 

You know, I didn't grow up with my dad, but I felt like I did when I went to his funeral, in a way, because all his classmates came and told stories about him that I didn't ever know. And he was highly respected by the class. He had a discus record, he said, for a moment. I've looked everywhere. I can't find it in the record books. But he was, again, a great mentor. And my mom and my father were my first two mentors. And we had something in common, actually, in our careers, because his first assignment, as I was mentioning earlier, was combat, war, which you didn't expect. And mine was Vietnam, marching to the sound of cannons. And it wasn't that popular to do that after the protest and everything else that was going on in the ‘60’s. 

The other thing that we have in common is that one of his assignments was to work in Redstone Arsenal alongside Wernher von Braun. They did work together on the missile program. So he helped develop the Nike-Hercules missile. Just by coincidence, my missiles that I commanded in the States and in Italy were Nike-Hercules missiles. Mine were nuclear. So we did have some points of commonality, I suppose. 

Okay, moving along. Nancy. Where's Nancy? Hey, Nancy! Raise your hand, really high. And her husband, Jerry. Okay, so who's Nancy? Well, we met at 15, and she became the Army Wife. And everyone knows who's an Army Wife how difficult an Army Wife is 24/7, long absences. My first year when I was in Vietnam and constantly moving houses and in a strange coincidence when I went to Vietnam, my first firebase was named Firebase Nancy. Go figure! And we had the first chemical attack, the only chemical attack by the Vietcong. 

Her father, Baron, who we loved dearly, was a Marine in the Pacific. Again, common denominator, same time as my dad was in the Pacific, and a strong influence on our family. He was a barber who died finally at 101. I think he cut hair until he was 101 years old. And he was a strong, strong influence on all of us because he cut your hair, right? Your body. 

Okay. So I do want to also repeat Bob's presence here. It wasn't easy. He has a board meeting and prepared for it on Saturday. He had to rearrange his schedule. But over the years, 60 years I've known Bob, if you can believe that, we were in the same company. And he's been a great, great mentor as well. Now, he tried to get me into the State Department as Under Secretary of State, and we almost got there. But that didn't happen for various reasons. You took me on as a senior advisor to Secretary Pompeo. So we've worked together over the years as much as possible. He was in war post-unification Germany during the 90s as an ambassador. Those were very important years when I was doing MTV as well. So we were able to work together on that. Great mentor. Well, thank you. 

Going on about mentors. Class of ‘70. You were very eloquent about the class of ‘70. It was challenging. It was wartime years. It was not popular. We came in as heroes, really, in ‘66 and left as anti-heroes in some way. And it was a tough gig because you had film, you had music, you had this cultural antagonism toward the military. We didn't start the war. We just went to the sound of cannons and obeyed the orders. But it was tough for the class, a tough moment for the class. We were the bookend, if you will, in the Class of ‘70 to the last year of the ultimate sacrifice to the war. Sully, you've already talked so much about Sully. I'm not going to talk about him anymore, but we're quite blessed to have him as President. He is an amazing leader and has been. Where are you, Sully? I want to look you in the eye. There you go. See, he's so humble. He sits in the back row. Love it. 

I also want to recognize Dave Brown. Dave and Susan. By the way, Betsy with Sully. Don't want to forget Betsy. Army wife, right? Dave Brown, where are you, Dave? There he is and his wife, Susan. 50 years. He was class president for 50 years. Or as my son, Rocky, would say, you baby boomers. You just don't give it up, do you? They're all Gen Zs, by the way. 

A cardiology innovator, one of the probably leading cardiologists in the entire world, John Connors. You already paid tribute to John, but I got to do it too. You know, when you're the rock star and to be first captain, you are the rock star. Whatever small number of dates you have at one point, he's got them all. You know, if everybody wants to be the first captain. 

Who else? And Freddie, or where are you, Fred? Dr. Lau. The one thing you didn't say about Fred is he's got something like 17,000 or 18,000 open-heart surgeries you've either done yourself or overseas, which is quite astounding. And he is our Distinguished Graduate. Thank you for being here, Fred. 

Okay. Ben Bentley, where have you been? I always singled out Ben because he supported my political campaign when they were attacking me. I was getting more incoming in my politics in Miami Beach than I got in Vietnam. I was on the front lines. But we have no regrets, right, Schatzi? It was a great experience. It was daunting, and you helped us fight back a bit. 

A4 classmates, where are you? Just raise your hand, A4. We got... You know, true to the West Point commitment, which is one of the many things that makes West Point great. The one thing you didn't say, Mark, and you covered a lot of history there, is that you have to come from different states around the country. And so every state has to be represented at West Point. So just in our little thing, we had Santa Barbara, we had my roommate, Charlie McGee from the Bronx, we have Nebraska, Missouri. Where's Ron Rold? Ron, you came from the Midwest. We have the Country Roads of West Virginia. Keith, where's Keith? From West Virginia. And it was just a great mix of geography that you didn't get until you went to West Point. We even had the Plains of Wyoming, believe it or not. Rivers Head, I don't know if they were the Plains or the Mountains. Bill Taylor, Charlie and Marilyn Velez. By the way Bill, where's Bill? Raise your hand Bill! Yeah up there! Three sons serving in the military, two West Point grads, and four children together. Charlie and Marilyn right there raise your hand, Charlie Marilyn. Love you dearly. Patriots all the way. Frank and Jane Seaman, my roommate on and off for a number of years. A record holder in track meet. For weekends now he still climbs up high speed. And Jane, you were a close friend back then and still remain that way.

Matt and Jan Fleumer, the cool factor, because they're Europeans, they play soccer. And, you know, they were the cool ones, and they gave us that cool, whatever cool factor we could get. Ron, I already, where are you again? I want to get, because he's a superb class historian in everything he does. Keith, I talked about you, where’s Keith? There he is. So he goes to Harvard to get an MBA. What does he do on the side? Gets a PhD! Who does that? From Harvard. Doug Jeffrey, Class of ‘69. So we're working together, actually, on a documentary, and that's kind of cool. He's a father of, what, two Olympic swimmers? One, okay. Take one. And Ellen, where's Ellen? Raise your hand Ellen. Also fantastic mentors all the way. 

And when I think of you at this time, I think of things that I had no clue even existed. Things like solid mechanics, thermodynamics, nuclear physics, electric. I try to convince my wife that I have a minor in electrical engineering and I can't even plug the plug in the wall. She has to do it. She can't believe it. And in Russia. Bill helped me out with Russian all those years. 

Bob Bakish, come on now. Where's Bob? Where are you, Bob? There he is. Okay, who's Bob? So Bob was the number one, the smartest CEO in the media industry. He also commanded, I like to say commanded, one of the largest media companies in the world. I had the pleasure of working with Bob for a long time on the international side. And a fun fact, when I was talking to the athletic director a few years ago, and he was nervous about the renewal of CBS football, Army football being on CBS. Bob jumped in right away, saved the day, and Army football is still on CBS, including the most watched game in the entire year, which is the Army-Navy football game.

Okay, Tim Riley. Where's Tim Riley? Tim Riley is our Churchill representative. He knows more about–and Chris. Sorry, where's Chris? Right next to him–this is a brilliant scholar. They invited me to Westminster to give the same speech or lecture as Winston Churchill, and that kind of started us on our way with Churchill. And I quote Churchill all the time, thanks to Tim. One of my favorites is “Never, never, never give in. Never, never.” So I added a few more “never”s when I was working at MTV, to build MTV across the country. 

Jim and Sue Bender, where are you, Jim? Okay. So Jim is a mentor and told me not to run for political office, and I immediately filed for running for political office. He said that because he ran for Senate of New Hampshire and lived through hell, I will say. Right, Jim? But for us, it was a great experience. We don't regret it. We provided a choice. We didn't cross the finish line, but it's okay. It's okay. 

From Miami the Wennicks, where are Wayne and Lisa? Dear friends, they live in Delray Beach. I've known them for years and years and years. Jonathan Plutzik, where are you, Jonathan? Right there. He's the real shadow Mayor of Miami Beach. He owns the best hotel in Miami. If you want to stay, we'll give you a good rate, I promise. Who else have we got here? Chris didn't make it, did he? Chris Bess. Our police chief. Ok Robin Malek, where's Robin? So Robin got really excited on the bus ride over here when she saw the name of the gym, the baseball field, was named after not you, but someone with the same name. So what does Robin do? She runs a health initiative, one of our many health initiatives, but this one happens to be the best now, that actually has a cure to cancer, believe it or not. It's too long to explain. Corner her when you can, how she does it, but it is legendary. It really is. 

Mark Baranek, where are you? There's Mark. Mark is, we've all had hip transplants. He competes with everybody. So he had a hip transplant about two months ago. And then, hip replacement, sorry. And then liked it so much, he came back 10 days later and had another one because the first one didn't work. He got a staff infection, but he's doing great. He's walking here, walking fine today I've seen. He's taken us on something called the March of the Living. If you haven't heard of that, you know, sign up for it. It's a pretty tough trip. It's through the camps of Poland, Mark is the son of a Holocaust survivor. And, of course, tells a story that his father told him about the Holocaust. And one by one by one, we went through all that. And, you know, a couple of lessons about Israel being necessary. One being: we cannot let that happen again. We will not let that happen again. And that was a good lesson from our mentor Mark. 

Linda Alexander okay Chief of Propaganda! And she was the youngest ever Vice President at MTV. She started something online called We Are the Mighty which you gotta go on this website. It's extraordinary for veterans, with stories and videos. And we love Linda. She's part of the family. She's been a mentor, as well. So I would just like you to give yourself a hand, because you are one of the best people we have. 

Now, I learned from Pharrell Williams, not the name drop, I mean, you know, MTV, you've got to name drop. So Pharrell Williams said, never go anywhere without your posse. So we have our posse here. Where's our posse? We've got Yani over there. Coumba, where's Coumba? Senegal! Over there. And where's Beto? Our trustee. So that's our posse we don't go anywhere without them, they were with us in the campaign and they're with us now.

A few words about why West Point…so you've all said it beautifully and I don't want to be redundant. But in our view, West Point is fulfilling its mission better than it's ever happened, certainly in the 60 years that I've known this academy, it is operating at top level. And we've heard the words over and over and over, General MacArthur, 1962, “duty, honor, country.” Despite what you see in Washington, despite all the turmoil and the divisions, those words hold firm. And they bring together not only the belief in America, but optimism in our future. And again, despite what's happening elsewhere, including Washington. When you walk around, it's not a campus, it's a base, of course, and when you talk to cadets, you instantly pick up on their integrity, their service. You can talk to any cadet. Their can-do spirit, their compassion, it's remarkable. Their professionalism, their sense of equality, their sense of duty, their courage to act, which is so important, and their leadership, and grit. Who can compete with the West Point group? They represent the youth of America, for sure, and are prepared to serve coming right out of the gate. 

Day one, or as the commandant told me, they're baked. By the time they're done here, they're baked. So they go straight into service, sometimes involving the ultimate sacrifice, and they deploy to land in Syria, to Africa, the Philippines, you name it. Simply, they are positioned to be our heroes of tomorrow, no question, and at a crucial time. A crucial time for our country that's facing complex dynamic challenges everywhere and getting worse, it seems. Accelerating at an incredible rate. So we became convinced, Schatzi and I, that this institution has to be supported at all costs. And this is a big year, the 250th anniversary of our country, but it's also the 224th anniversary for the Army, and it is as close to true north as you will ever get. We have to guard it and protect it, and it's just that important. 

Why the library? So the library, you know, okay. We live in a digital world but this is the physical grounding of the values of West Point, and when you walk in this building you can feel it. It's solid. The building is solid. It's as solid as the granite rock that West Point is built on. It's a center for reflection and knowledge. And we all know knowledge is strength. It's the heartbeat right here, the rotunda. We love it. By the way, we didn't come up with the name. Dean Reeves came up with the name. Or maybe it was Colonel Cash. One of you two? Okay, you always do that. He's your boss, you have to do that. I think you kind of handed it to him. 

But anyway, we were very happy with that. General, thank you for that. And, you know, that's why we're here. But the other thing is that it overlooks The Plain. Now, we have a temporary structure here because there, which is the central area for classrooms, is going to get redone. So this is temporary. You can't see it now. But for lunch, when we go up, you're going to see The Plain. What's The Plain? Well, The Plain is where we take our oath to serve. It's the planning, I mean, it's the, for our class anyway, a training round. We did our first introduction to gas. Gas had been back in the ‘60s. I forget what kind of gas it was, but I never want to breathe that again! 

For me, I was late coming to West Point. That's another story. But I came from the beaches of Miami. I was surfing. And...there I am a week later on the plain with a bayonet saying “kill!” and I knew that this was serious business. Serious, serious business. Also on a personal note: I would come here and read the newspapers because they would have hometown newspapers and for someone who was lonely and homesick it was a refuge. Now, when you get up you'll look around the Plain and you'll see six statues: Thayer, which we talked about, is really responsible for the modernization of West Point back in 1817. Grant, not only our president but our military leader, and also a graduate. McArthur, as you walk a little further, won the Pacific for us and returned to the Philippines as we all know. Then as you walk a little further you see Eisenhower who later became president and of course mastermind, with the biggest landing ever in the history of warfare. Washington is right outside the dining hall. He's the only one that actually didn't graduate from West Point because he preceded it. And then you come to the statue here, which you can't see quite from this angle, but when you go upstairs, you'll be able to see: Patton. 

Now, why do I like Patton so much? Well, for me, Patton's an inspiration because, oh, I don't know, aggressive, creative, relentless is what he was when he marched across Europe. And I took that lesson in launching MTV across Europe. I know it sounds trite, but it's true. We were an unstoppable force, just like Patton was an unstoppable force. I also took solace, I suppose, in Patton because he actually graduated lower than me in the class. And some people say, well, that's because the binoculars are facing the opposite direction. I don't know. 

But the secondary purpose for our passion for the library is that for any cadet walking through, perhaps looking at the plaque, it is a reminder that if I can make it from the bottom of my class to the center of the library, anything is possible. Anything is possible. And I think that's a valuable lesson for our cadets. Now, I didn't realize–and I'm almost done. I'm almost done–I didn't realize that in real time, but as I look back at West Point, it taught me many lessons. I was not smart enough to realize this at first. 

Number one was how to adapt. And I had the unique opportunity to combine my hard power of nuclear missiles and come back later to implement soft power. Soft power being music and MTV and the spread of culture around the world, freedom, democracy, and American values. When Reagan said on June 12, 1987, “Tear down this wall, Mr. Gorbachev,” I listened and it inspired me. Now, we're not going to take credit, but we came back two and a half years later and the Berlin Wall came down. We innovated technology that brought our signal of freedom and democracy behind the Iron Curtain and that inspired a generation of young people to stand up. And the consequence, the result, was hundreds of millions of people in Eastern Europe became free. So for me, again, we didn't bring the wall down. But we were told we brought the wall down. But for me, it was that the DMZ became MTV. Missiles became music. The Iron Curtain became the red carpet. And more important than those lessons are the leadership lessons. And this has been with me from day one since graduation.

First on the battlefield, last to leave. Why is that important? When you have a global business– right, Bob? You have a crisis somewhere in the world every single day. You've got to be on location, and you've got to be the last to leave until that crisis is resolved. Quick to take blame, slow to take credit, which is really about accountability. A lot of people in business don't do that. Organize in small fighting units, big believer in that. Small attacks, large defense. So we organized MTV around the world in small fighting units, 100 to 200 people, kept the morale high, communication lines open, supply lines open. It was a big reason for our success. 

And then, of course, our mottos, our class motto: “Serve with Integrity.” And, you know, it sounds, I suppose, corny in a way, but we live by that. We live by that class motto. Serve with integrity. And everyone knows “Duty, Honor, Country.” 

Let me end on a personal note. We've developed this great friendship with Shane and Kimberly that's going to last forever. And because partly, as a part of that friendship,

we've been able to score a place to stay when we come to West Point. Now, what does that mean? Well, you'll see it on the tour, and you'll see it tonight. It's, in my view, it's not better than

the Supe’s House, but it comes pretty close. Because you've got the view right on the corner. And we've sat on the terrace, and we've watched runners come by. We've watched the 101st come by. And it's the best view by far. So what I do is when we stay–we have the pleasure and the thrill of staying there–I wake up at 6 o'clock and go out at 6:15. The base is very very quiet. And I walk out of the Dean's house, and I go toward trophy point. Which if you haven't seen it, you'll see it again today. You see the mist rising from the sunrise on the Plain, and already I'm starting to be flooded with memories. But I'm standing there with no one, in solitude, all alone. And I've done this several times. Then four soldiers come up. Usually it's three males, two and two, women and male. And one has the shell to load the cannon, one to fire the cannon, one to raise the flag, and one to start the bugle. 

And as that cannon shoots off at 6:30, and as that flag starts to rise on a 130 feet flagpole, and as the bugle player starts playing Reveille, it's one of the most inspirational moments that one can have. And what do you do? You just are overcome not only by emotion, by gratefulness, that we come from this great nation of America, and that this institution is about saving and safeguarding our freedom and our values. And the emotion that you get from that gives you clarity. A clarity that is so inspiring, everything else melts away. And you quickly return to the words, “Duty, Honor, Country.” Thank you.