Jim Webb To Be Awarded Navy League American Patriot Award

Jim Webb To Be Awarded Navy League American Patriot Award
 
HONOLULU -- Jim Webb will be honored by the Navy League, the foremost citizens’ organization to serve, support and stand with all the sea services, at the 12th annual American Patriot Dinner on Saturday in Honolulu. The next day Webb will deliver a speech outlining his vision for America and his positions on national security and foreign policy at a special gathering where he will be welcomed by the Vietnamese community, featuring many veterans and a tribute to Hawaiian culture.
 
The Navy League of the United States will present the Honolulu Council's American Patriot Award to Webb at the Pacific Aviation Museum Pearl Harbor (319 Lexington Blvd, Honolulu, HI 96818) from 7 to 8:30 p.m. Sept. 12. Sen. John McCain is among the past recipients of this prestigious award.
 
Sunday’s event will be held at the Jade Dynasty Restaurant, 4th Floor, in the Ala Moana Shopping Center (1450 Ala Moana Boulevard, Honolulu, Hawaii 96814) on Sept. 13 at 5:30 p.m.
 
Webb, former U.S. Senator from Virginia, has been a combat Marine, a counsel in the Congress, an assistant secretary of defense and Secretary of the Navy, an Emmy-award winning journalist, a film-maker, and the author of 10 books.
 
Webb is the only military veteran seeking the Democratic presidential nomination this year and the only combat veteran running in either party. His military awards include the second, third and fourth highest medals for valor. He was awarded the Navy Cross, the Silver Star, two Bronze Stars and two Purple Hearts for heroism while commanding a Marine rifle platoon and company in Vietnam.
 
Webb’s journalistic career included broad coverage in East and Southeast Asia, as well as time as a combat correspondent in Beirut during the Marine Corps deployment in 1983, for which he received a National Emmy Award, and as an embedded reporter in Afghanistan in 2004. Among his many books are Fields of Fire, widely considered the classic novel of the Vietnam War, and Born Fighting, a 2,000-year history of the Scots-Irish people that writer Tom Wolfe termed “the  most brilliant battle flare ever launched by a book… an important work of sociological history.”
 
While in the Senate, Webb made veterans issues a priority, authoring and steering to passage the Post-9/11 GI Bill, which has helped more than 1 million veterans get education benefits. As a senator he steadfastly focused on foreign affairs, making a high-profile trip to Myanmar in 2009 to help secure the release of an American prisoner, and serving as chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee’s Asia-Pacific subcommittee. On domestic affairs, Mr. Webb was a strong proponent of reforming the criminal justice system, an issue that is again in the limelight.
 
Webb will be accompanied by his wife, Hong Le Webb, who was born in Vietnam. She and her family left the country after the fall of Saigon in 1975. She grew up in New Orleans, Louisiana, and later attended college at the University of Michigan, and then received her law degree from Cornell. She was an accomplished securities and corporate lawyer in Washington D.C.