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Nov. 20, 2025 21:01-21:55 - CSPAN
53:54
Funeral of Vice President Dick Cheney
Participants
Main
d
dr jonathan reiner
08:30
g
george w bush
r 09:49
l
liz cheney
r 08:56
p
pete williams
06:42
|

Speaker Time Text
unidentified
Along with these other television providers, giving you a front-row seat to democracy.
Earlier this month, former Vice President Dick Cheney died at the age of 84.
During his funeral service at Washington National Cathedral, former President George W. Bush and his daughter, former Republican Congresswoman Liz Cheney, delivered remarks.
This portion of the funeral service is nearly an hour.
dr jonathan reiner ▲ ● ▼
President and Dr. Biden, President and Mrs. Bush, Vice Presidents Harris, Pence, Quayle, and Gore, distinguished guests and friends.
we gather today in this holy and magnificent space, one week before Thanksgiving, to give thanks for the life of Richard Bruce Cheney, the 46th Vice President of the United States, and to thank his family, Mrs. Cheney, Liz, Mary, Phil, Heather, Elizabeth, Kate, Grace, Sam, Philip, Sarah, and Richard.
Thank them for sharing him with us.
I'm Jonathan Reiner, and I was privileged to be the Vice President's cardiologist.
I'll admit, I'm not very good at letting go.
But it can take a village to care for a complicated patient, and I want to acknowledge the many doctors and nurses here with us today who took such magnificent care of the Vice President.
Over a span of 27 years, Vice President Cheney gifted me with his trust, and there's nothing more sacred between a doctor and their patient than trust.
I'm happy to report that I haven't given many eulogies.
No one wants a doctor who's great at funerals.
But I stand here this morning, deeply honored to tell you about my remarkable patient, Dick Cheney.
Twenty years before I met the Vice President, his career in elected office almost ended before it began when he suffered a heart attack during his first campaign for Congress.
He was only 37.
What Dick Cheney didn't know at the time, because his doctors never told him, was that they thought it would be best for him to withdraw from the race, that after the heart attack, a vigorous campaign might be too much for him.
They didn't know Dick Cheney.
Or more likely, maybe they did know Dick Cheney, and no one had the guts to tell him to quit.
So after a period of rest, he told Wyoming's voters that he was up for the challenge.
He said a little hard work never hurt anybody.
And later in the summer, he resumed his campaign, won that election, and then five more.
For a man with very complex heart disease, the Vice President was the easiest patient to care for.
He was meticulously compliant with his prescribed treatment.
As it pertained to his health, he lived by the motto, when in doubt, check it out.
He never allowed politics to influence his personal health care decisions, and not once in all my time as his doctor did he try to write or change a single word of a statement I issued.
There was only one time in my entire tenure with the Vice President that he said no to a medical recommendation from me.
It was on September 11, 2001.
I had an appointment to see him that day at the White House for a scheduled checkup.
I don't typically make house calls, but sometimes I'm willing to make an exception.
In advance of the visit, my colleague Colonel Lou Hoffman, the Vice President's wonderful full-time White House doctor, had arranged for some routine blood tests.
But before the tubes could be sent to the lab, our world changed.
Amazingly, even with the chaos and horror of that day, somehow late in the afternoon, the blood samples found their way to a lab.
In the early evening, while the Vice President was on the move to an undisclosed location, Lou called to tell me that our patient's potassium level was dangerously, maybe even lethally high.
I thought that the result was probably erroneous, an artifact of the prolonged delay in processing the blood.
But we needed to be sure.
I was worried about him.
I asked Lou if we could repeat the test right away, but the vice president firmly said, no, not today.
I didn't think that was the day to argue with him.
You might think that taking care of a public figure, particularly one who carried nuclear launch codes, could be a bit intimidating.
But the Vice President was an unassuming man.
His calls to me, even when originating from the White House, always began in the same modest way.
Hi, John, it's Dick Cheney.
Prior to the 2000 election, one of my young cardiology fellows, who somehow had never heard of Dick Cheney, asked the soon-to-be Vice President of the United States what he did for a living.
The soon-to-be Vice President answered, government work.
He was also very grateful and very generous.
Prior to taking office in 2001, the Vice President, Mrs. Cheney, quietly donated a large gift to George Washington University, which became the founding support for our Heart Institute, enabling us to provide defibrillators to churches in the poorest parts of the nation's capital and pacemakers to patients in the poorest parts of the world.
In his 2006 eulogy for President Ford, Vice President Cheney referred to his boss, the 38th President of the United States, as the still point in the turning wheel.
It's a beautiful image derived from a passage in a T.S. Eliot poem.
I remember hearing his words then and thinking how aptly the phrase described the Vice President himself.
In all our time together, in moments of true existential risk for him, the Vice President was always the calmest person in the room, including me.
One evening in July 2010, as he lay literally dying in the cardiac surgical intensive care unit, I told the Vice President that the mechanical heart assist device scheduled for the next day couldn't wait until morning.
It would be too late.
He looked for a moment towards Ms. Cheney, Liz, and Mary, and then said calmly, okay, let's do it.
That's all he said.
Okay, let's do it.
Months later, as he recalled that night, he said that he thought he would probably die, and he was at peace with it.
The Latin word for heart is core.
It's also the source for the word courage.
To have heart is to have courage.
I don't think courage is necessarily the absence of fear.
Rather, it's the ability to persevere even in the presence of fear.
Time and time again, that's what Vice President Cheney was able to do.
His wasn't a false courage cloaked by a thin veneer of bravado, but rather a genuine fortitude in the face of true mortal peril.
He lived most of his adult life chased by a relentless disease intent on killing him.
But he never looked over his shoulder.
He only looked ahead.
The hospitalization to implant the ventricular cystivise was long and complicated.
He was in the ICU for more than a month, but not for a single moment without his family watching over him.
When I entered his ICU room on his sickest days, I would often find Mrs. Cheney at the base of the bed, rubbing his feet.
Liz and Mary took turns sleeping in the hospital.
He just barely survived.
But the device ultimately enabled him to recover and last the 20 months until he was gifted with a new heart.
Today, as we remember the Vice President's life, I ask you also to think about the anonymous family who, in their time of terrible grief 13 years ago, donated the heart of someone they treasured to a stranger they would never know.
It was a blessing and an act of love.
A gift that gave him many more summer afternoons on the Snake River with his fly rod, and most profoundly, precious time to watch his seven grandchildren grow up.
This was what was most important to Dick Cheney.
At a recent birthday party, he told them, I am so proud of all of you.
He was an American patriot and a man who loved his family.
I was honored to be his doctor.
who is an even greater honor to be his friend.
pete williams ▲ ● ▼
As someone who grew up in the same town, Casper, went to the same high school, enjoyed the same wide-open spaces, I can't think of anybody who better embodied Wyoming values than Dick Cheney.
He was comfortable in the saddle on horseback.
He judged people by what they accomplished and what they stood for.
He loved the state where he grew up and met Lynn.
And Wyoming loved him back, electing him six times to the House of Representatives.
He enjoyed the solitude of the Wyoming wilderness, too, and was an expert at finding the best places to deploy a fly rod.
In fact, if you wanted his attention in the office and you saw that the Orvis catalog was open on his desk, you knew to come back some other time.
For my 50th birthday, he offered to let me come with him for a day's fly fishing in the Tetons.
I told him that the best gift I could give in return was to respectfully decline because I'm no fisherman and I knew that if I spoke even 10 words all day, he would say I talk too much.
When I was his press secretary, I once wrote a news release that contained the word bureaucrat.
He crossed it out and substituted federal official.
As the son of a man who worked for the agriculture department, he respected people who chose to serve their country.
Many Americans got their first look at Dick Cheney during the Gulf War, Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm.
My office at the Pentagon was the place where letters made their first stop, and one in particular stands out in my memory.
A woman in Indiana wrote to say this, During these difficult times for our country, it is reassuring to turn on the television and see someone in charge of our military who is plain speaking, resolute, and strong.
And then she added, I find these qualities to be very attractive.
I'm not sure whether you're married, but if you're ever in Indianapolis, you can look me up.
I showed this letter to Secretary Cheney, and he took it home to brag about it.
Shortly after Dick Cheney became Secretary of Defense, one of our senior policy officials had a request for me as the Pentagon spokesman.
A New York Times reporter wanted to know more about a new effort by the George H.W. Bush administration to reach a nuclear weapons agreement with the Soviet Union.
The official sought permission to give the Times some background.
I relayed the request to Secretary Cheney, who gave his okay, but he said, make absolutely sure our guy talks it over with the White House first to get a clear idea of what he can say.
The following Sunday morning, the paper revealed that the president would soon propose a new negotiating tactic.
The problem was that the president planned to reveal that strategy in a speech on Monday, and he was none too pleased to see it spelled out beforehand.
I received a call at home on Sunday informing me that this official and I were to report to Secretary Cheney's office first thing Monday morning.
We walked in and sat down, braced for the worst.
The Secretary said, I've got some good news and some bad news.
Which do you want first?
So I asked for the bad news.
He looked at us sternly and he said, the bad news is that the President of the United States is very angry with you both.
And then I asked for the good news and he said, I only have to fire one of you.
I could tell he was joking.
I'm not sure the senior official realized it.
And then Secretary Cheney said, it's okay, guys.
I told the President it was my idea.
He could have told President Bush that it was our fault, but he took the blame and saved us from ourselves.
When the boss that you serve cleans up after your mistakes, you can bet that inspires loyalty.
And Dick Cheney demonstrated that kind of decency and concern for all the people who served him during his more than 40 years in public life.
In 1991, a magazine planned to run a story outing me.
I knew it was coming, so I went up to his office and offered to resign.
He wouldn't hear of it.
And for several days after that article appeared, he would call me on the direct line to my desk at the Pentagon to ask how I was doing and to tell me to get on with the job.
Washington attracts ambitious people driven by a desire to serve their country.
But many of those who become big names acquire staffers and then cast them aside as they rise in stature.
Not Dick Cheney.
Throughout his life, on his steady rise through the quarters of power, his circle of friends kept growing.
He did not abandon those who helped him along the way.
And when George W. Bush chose him to be the vice presidential candidate in 2000, their first campaign stop together was Casper, a demonstration of Dick's loyalty to his home state.
I don't think he was worried about locking up Wyoming's three electoral votes.
Those of us fortunate to work for him knew that he had a sly sense of humor.
He loved to tell a story about attending a political event when he ran for re-election as Wyoming's congressman.
He said he walked up to one old rancher, stuck out his hand, and said, I'm Dick Cheney.
I'm running for Congress and I'd like to have your vote.
And the rancher replied, You got it.
That guy we got in there now is no damn good.
In my seven years of working for him in the Congress and at the Pentagon, I seldom came away from a meeting with him without thinking that I'd learned something about politics and government.
Lynn captured that experience perfectly when she introduced him at the 2000 Republican Convention.
Here's what she said.
Conversations with Dick have a way of taking unexpected turns.
Problems get redefined, and you find yourself thinking about things in new ways.
And she added, I cannot imagine the discussion that would not benefit from his presence.
Dick Cheney was a good and decent man.
He loved his family and his home state.
His highest aspiration was serving the country.
And I'm so lucky and so deeply grateful that I was along for part of that ride.
george w bush ▲ ● ▼
Lynn, Liz, and Mary and all the Cheney family, honored guests, ladies and gentlemen, I appreciate this chance to say a few words about a man I was proud to call my vice president and my friend.
Though not a happy assignment, I do consider it an easy one because there was so much to like and admire about Dick Cheney.
Dick was a stoical man, and I doubt he left his life with any complaints about the time given to him or its end.
He was also a grateful man, grateful above all for three loyal, loving women who shared in his journey.
As I quickly discovered in 2000, when you choose one Cheney, you get four.
His busy and purposeful life was an adventure they experienced together.
In a family so close, you dread the day when the circle is broken.
Lynn and the girls, Heather, Phil, and all the grandchildren, he sure loved you all.
And he was proud of his family.
I hope it helps to know that many people in this country share your sense of loss.
And we're here today as your friends.
25 years ago, I had a big choice to make, a big job to fill.
I wanted to know all my options, so I enlisted the help of a distinguished former White House Chief of Staff and Secretary of Defense to lead my search for running mate.
Dick Cheney and I went through the files name by name.
We talked over the various qualities I was looking for in a vice president.
Preparedness, mature judgment, rectitude, and loyalty.
Above all, I wanted someone with the ability to step into the presidency without getting distracted by the ambition to seek it.
After weeks of these meetings, I began to have a thought I could not shake.
I realized the best choice for the vice president was the man sitting right in front of me.
And I told him that.
At such a moment, most in this position would have jumped at the chance, but Dick stayed detached, and he analyzed it.
Before I made my decision, he insisted on giving me a complete ringdown of all the reasons I should not choose him.
He also heard one of my top advisors was against the choice, so Dick invited him to make the case.
As he did so, he sat there unfazed and expressionless.
In the end, I trusted my judgment.
I remember my dad's words when I told him what I was planning.
He said, son, you couldn't pick a better man.
The way this all unfolded followed a pattern in Dick Cheney's life.
Summing up his career a few years ago, he said, a few breaks came my way, and one job always led to another, in a life that's taken me far to more places than I ever expected.
That was Dick's typically understated version of events, but there's a little more to the story.
His abilities were self-evident without need of calculation or self-promotion.
His talent and restraint exceeded his ego.
Even before the Cheney name reached the national stage, people always saw something in the man, solid, reliable, and rare.
One of the first to really notice was Lynn Vincent.
She can recall a time in their college years when Dick, as he freely admitted, lacked direction and needed some straightening out.
I think we had that in common.
That was Lynn's kind of project, and it did not take her long.
He said many times that his life would have turned out a whole lot different if he had never met her.
It may explain how in just over a decade, a guy can go from laying transmission lines outside Cheyenne to serving as chief of staff of the President of the United States.
In Dick's telling, those years working for Gerald Ford were special and informative.
He cherished the association, and the high regard went both ways.
In his memoir, President Ford described Dick's steadiness, his low-key style, and his absolute loyalty.
I know exactly what he meant.
These are not traits easy to come by in Washington.
Being calm, reticent, undramatic, and untrustworthy are not everyone's formula for success in politics.
But they were the Cheney way, and they worked.
I'm reminded of a renowned senator who once gave this advice to a junior colleague.
Perhaps he said you could occasionally allow yourself the luxury of an unexpressed thought.
Dick Cheney was like that.
Sparing and measured with words.
In a profession that attracts talkers, he was a thinker and a listener.
And when he did speak up, conveying thoughts in that even tone of voice, that orderly, unexcitable manner, you knew you were getting the best of a highly disciplined mind.
No colleague, no legislator, no foreign leader who ever met Dick Cheney ever doubted that they were dealing with a serious man.
Of course, not every political counselor is cut out to be a political candidate.
But Dick Cheney put himself to the test and never lost an election.
In fact, it happens that he and I both ran for Congress in 1978.
And let me just say the Republican wave didn't reach West Texas that year.
He told me a few times what it's like to campaign in Wyoming.
Lots of small gatherings and long drives.
It's easy to imagine the impression that young Dick Cheney made when he was asking for the vote.
I wish more Americans got to know Dick Cheney the way the folks in Casper, Cody, and Laramie got to know him.
Smart and polished, without airs.
Courteous and approachable, seeing everyone as an equal, a gentleman by nature, and a true man of the West.
Dick was funny and easygoing in a style that his public image never caught up with.
Though we can all agree he wasn't your standard issue politician.
If any voters came hoping for a kind word and a hug, they'd have to settle for the kind word.
But you can't question the appeal of the only person from America's Mountain West ever elected to national office.
On that score, history should record that I chose my vice president not once, but twice.
In 2004, he offered to step aside in case I wanted to replace him.
I thought about it for a while, but after four years of seeing how he treated people, how he carried responsibility, how he handled pressure and took the hits, I arrived back at the conclusion that they do not come any better than Dick Cheney.
Colleagues from every chapter of his career will tell you that he lifted the standards of those around him just by being who he was, so focused and so capable.
In our years in office together on the quiet days and on the hardest ones, he was everything a president should expect in his second in command.
In moments of testing, Dick Cheney was a model of concentration, alertness, and composure.
His memoir was titled My Time.
His time produced an old breed of public servant, defined by their substance and character.
This was a vice president totally devoted to protecting the United States and its interests.
There was never any agenda or angle beyond that.
You did not know Dick Cheney unless you understood his greatest concerns and ambitions were for his country.
Across 40 years of service, across 40 years, his service was consistent, faithful, and noble.
All in all, not a bad showing for a career in a life, especially when you consider his sheer physical endurance.
As Dr. Rayner pointed out, he became an authority on cardiovascular disease and a marvel at what resourceful doctors and one very determined patient can accomplish.
Dick had faced down fears and hardships, but he really didn't speak about them.
The reward was more of a life than he ever expected, including seven grandchildren to complete the picture.
One of them, Richard, even asked his grandfather to attend kindergarten class for a show in Tell.
I wish I'd have been there.
As a matter of fact, the teacher told Dick that that was the most exciting show in Tale since the morning a little girl brought her cow to class.
That might have been amongst Dick's last moments in the spotlight.
In his final years, he was content to go his way.
At a rare public appearance in 2022, he offered a kind of parting reflection.
He said, When you can look back on a lifetime in politics and government, and what you value most are the friendships, then I guess you've done all right.
A lot of us know that feeling as we say an affectionate farewell to the 46th Vice President of the United States.
It's something to be cherished when a man of his caliber has been your colleague and friend.
This son of Wyoming, son of Marjorie and Richard Cheney of Casper, went far in this world and in our own lives left a very fine mark.
We are grateful for his good life.
We honor his service.
And we pray that somewhere up the trail, we will meet him again.
unidentified
And of the strong from every mountain side where freedom of fathers come to thee.
Other single land we brought with freedom of soul in
Seven of us were blessed to be Dick Cheney's grandchildren.
The only one of us not here today is our older sister Katie, who is about to have a baby.
When I was 18, my grandpa helped me pack my things in his truck and drove me eight hours from Jackson Hole to Colorado Springs for my first year of college.
Along the way, he gave me advice, warning about the potential dangers associated with your freshman year of college, reminiscing about the days when he was taking my mom to college, and just talking about life in general.
I will forever see him that way, driving along an open road and telling me stories about his life while talking about the family that he loved so dearly.
I'll forever see him in his leather chair by the fire in his study in Wyoming, snow outside the windows, books piled up, and his beloved dogs at his feet.
I'll forever see him on horseback, riding up Spencer's Mountain for sunrise breakfast.
I'll forever see him on the south fork of the snake, fly rod in hand, perfect cast after perfect cast.
Sometimes he even gave one of his grandchildren the coveted seat in the front of the boat.
And he didn't even complain too much when, more than once, we hooked him with an out-of-control cast.
I'll forever see him at Thanksgiving and Christmas in the kitchen with a towel thrown over his shoulder, cooking for us all.
And we will forever be asking him, Is the turkey ready yet?
The day after my grandpa died, I pulled down the huge boxes of challenge coins he kept in the top of his closet.
I spent several hours looking at the coins, turning each one over in my hand to see its unique inscription.
As I held each coin, I was struck by just how many places my grandpa had been and how many people he must have met along the way.
But this is who Grandpa was.
Every person he met meant something to him, and every coin he was handed he kept forever.
Let me close with a few words prepared by our sister Katie, who could not be with us today.
Dear Grandpa, the mark you left on our world is remarkable, but it pales in comparison to the one you left on our family.
Your unwavering love for us is a legacy we will forever hold close and will pass on to our own children one day.
As we prepare to welcome your first great grandson into the world, please know that we are thinking of you.
And if this baby boy grows up to become even half the man that you were, we will consider ourselves profoundly blessed.
And rest assured, your great-grandson will be on the water with a fly rod in his hand the moment he can stand.
I am named after my grandpa.
And for my whole life, he was always there for me.
As Mr. Bush mentioned, one of my favorite stories of my grandpa is when he came to my kindergarten class.
My teacher said that grandpa was the best show and tell since my classmate brought her cow to class.
He truly loved that story.
We both played high school football.
My grandpa kept the schedule of my games on his desk, and he was nearly at almost all my games.
We were both running backs.
I recently read a comment from one of grandpa's coaches.
He said, Dick Cheney ran with the speed of a fence post.
Grandpa might not have been blessed with great speed, but he taught me that raw determination and grit can lead you to success.
He was the captain of his team, and his high school field in Casper is now named after him.
Every Christmas, Grandpa would cook our dinner while we hung out in the kitchen watching his favorite John Wayne movies, year after year.
We loved to do this even though we had seen these movies dozens of times.
I will always remember the hot Wyoming summer days when I was a kid.
Days that my siblings and I would spend sitting together on our back porch talking with our grandpa.
He would give us important life lessons as well as make us laugh.
What I remember specifically about the time I spent with my grandpa was the way he looked at me, how he looked at each of us.
This was because when my grandpa looked at you and smiled, he didn't even have to say a word.
You could just feel his love.
In a way, his gaze alone said, I love you more than anything.
He always told us how proud he was of us, and we will always try to follow his example.
To be people driven to love our families, to be respectful, and to live through the lessons he taught us.
To put love and our families first.
I love you, Grandpa.
When I was on the high school rodeo team in Jackson, Wyoming, my Grandpa was my driver.
In his Ford F-350 pickup, he hauled me and my horses hundreds of miles to rodeos all across the state.
He taught me how to have integrity, how to work hard, how to have grit, how to face adversity, and how to look danger and fear right in the eye and say, is that all you got?
I'm pretty sure he's the only person who ever had the title vice president turned rodeo grandpa, and I'm blessed he was mine.
After one high school rodeo in Casper, grandpa drove me to places that had been important to him growing up.
He showed me the house he was raised in and told me how he and his brother Bob would shoot rabbits out on the prairie and bring them home for his mom to cook for dinner.
He showed me Hat 6 Road, where his dad taught him to drive, and Natrona County High School, where he and my grandma graduated in 1959.
For the last stop, he pulled up outside a small house on West Bridge Drive.
You know what that is, Gracie, he said.
That's where I picked your grandma up for our very first date.
On drives to rodeos with my grandpa, he imparted important life lessons.
Once, we were talking about how much I like to ride bikes.
In response, my grandpa said, never ride a bike down the stairs.
You will not make it, and your head will go through the drywall.
He seemed to be speaking from experience.
Dick Cheney was a great rodeo grandpa because he never went anywhere unprepared.
You could always count on him to have emergency blankets, flashlights, headlamps, toolkits, different kinds of knives, emergency meals, fly rods, reindeer, pens, and butterscotch lifesavers.
Since we usually stayed in the small living quarters of our horse trailer, things got pretty crowded.
At one point, the Wall Street Journal got wind that Dick Cheney had turned into a full-time rodeo grandpa and asked to send a reporter to interview him.
A few minutes before the reporter was scheduled to arrive, grandpa and I looked around the living quarters and realized there was stuff everywhere.
Grandpa, we cannot have a Wall Street Journal reporter in here.
They're going to take pictures, I said.
You're right, he said, let's shove everything in the bathroom.
We ran around and did just that.
When we were done, grandpa looked at me and said, Gracie, whatever you do, do not let the reporter use the bathroom.
Long-haul road trips with my grandpa were extra educational because he did not believe in the use of any navigational devices.
We often took the scenic route.
He always knew the history of every area we drove through and taught me to stop at all the points of interest markers along the highways.
I'll forever see my grandpa in his Stetson right before a barrel race telling me, ride hard.
Go get him, Grace.
No matter the result, when my run was over, he would say, great job, I'm proud of you.
My grandpa had a love for the land, a love for his country, and a love for Wyoming.
Any day of the week, any hour of the day, he was there to help.
He was tough with a kind heart.
Dick Cheney wasn't just my grandpa.
He was my best friend, my hero, my role model, and the most influential person in my life.
And I know he's up in heaven right now with his beloved labs, Nelson, Davey, and Jackson, driving his Ford pickup and catching the biggest cutthroats and rainbows we could only ever imagine.
liz cheney ▲ ● ▼
Following your kids to talk about your dad is not good scheduling.
But distinguished guests, presidents, and vice presidents, dear friends, my mom and Mary and I and our families, thank you for being here to honor the good and great man we loved so much.
A few years ago, reflecting back on nearly 40 years in public service, Dick Cheney said this, The path I had traveled was partly due to the circumstance of my birth.
Not that I had been born into a powerful or privileged family.
I wasn't.
But I was born an American, a blessing surely among life's greatest.
My dad thought deeply about what this blessing meant, about the duties it imposed.
Shortly after he became Secretary of Defense in 1989, he described departing from the Pentagon.
As my helicopter lifted off the Pentagon helipad, I could look across the river to the great monuments of Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln, to the White House and the Capitol Building, where all the great decisions that have shaped 200 years of American history were made.
And I could look directly out on Arlington National Cemetery and remember what a terrible price thousands of brave Americans have paid so that all of us could enjoy the blessings of liberty.
My dad's devotion to America was deep and substantive.
He spent his life studying the history of our great republic.
He knew you couldn't truly appreciate what it means to live in freedom if you didn't understand the sacrifices of the generations who came before.
And he made sure that his children and grandchildren understood this too.
When Mary and I were little, my dad would load up our station wagon on the weekends to take us to visit Civil War battlefields.
With the back seat down and no need for seatbelts in those days, we would stretch out eating Krispy Kreme donuts for breakfast while my dad drove us to places like Gettysburg, Antietam, Chancellorsville, and Manassas.
To be clear, even with the donuts, Mary and I were not enthusiastic participants in these outings.
As you might imagine, Dick Cheney read every word of every sign at every battlefield, museum, and national park he ever visited.
When you're five or six years old, this is not your idea of a good time.
Mary and I usually moaned and groaned about how long he was taking, and Dick Cheney ignored us.
And he just kept reading the signs.
He didn't lecture us or demand that we read anything, but we pretty quickly realized no one was going anywhere until he got done.
And so we figured we might as well start reading the signs too.
And what an education we got.
That was the thing about Dick Cheney.
He wouldn't force his opinion on you or demand you do things his way.
He might not share his opinion at all if you didn't ask.
In fact, he was known to go long stretches of time without saying a single word.
But if you watched closely, if you asked questions, if you listened when he did speak, you had the experience of seeing the world opening up in front of you, of looking at things in new ways, of benefiting from his clarity of thought, his ability to crystallize what was important and what wasn't.
And he was always surprising.
Many know the story of his time at Yale.
If my dad heard you say he flunked out, he would correct you.
No, no, I was asked to leave twice.
He took a break from school and he spent several years building power line across the West.
I had heard this part of the story my whole life, but it wasn't until I worked with him on his memoirs that I learned how he spent his evenings.
At the end of long days, he'd unroll his sleeping bag by a campfire or on a cot in the cook tent.
And by the light of his Coleman lantern, he read Winston Churchill's six-volume history of World War II.
By the fall of 1963, Dick Cheney was convinced, some would say threatened, by my mother to return to school.
He'd been at the University of Wyoming just a few weeks when he climbed to a seat up near the rafters of the packed field house to hear President John F. Kennedy urge the students to dedicate their lives to the service of our nation.
I think this is the moment my dad decided what direction his life should take.
Though he was inspired to service by President Kennedy, Dick Cheney became a Republican.
But he knew that bonds of party must always yield to the single bond we share as Americans.
For him, a choice between defense of the Constitution and defense of your political party was no choice at all.
When he was vice president, he wrote in this letter to all of his grandchildren, as you grow, you will come to understand the sacrifices that each generation makes to preserve freedom and democracy for future generations.
And you will assume the important responsibilities of citizens in our society.
I ask of you as my grandchildren what I asked of my daughters, that you always strive in your lives to do what is right.
In the last few years, God gave me one of the greatest blessings of my life, the gift of time with my dad.
We spent hours sitting by the fire at his house or mine, watching football and old movies.
We went to grandkids' games and matches, and we hit the road again, this time with me in the driver's seat.
Now, let me be clear, he did not like my driving.
And in his defense, I had wrecked far too many of his cars over the years for him to be happy with this arrangement.
But we reached an accommodation of sorts.
My dad agreed to let me drive if I agreed to let him choose the music.
Johnny Cash, John Denver, and yes, even the carpenters were the soundtrack of our road trips.
We went to places he'd taken us 50 years ago, to Manassas and Antietam and Mount Vernon.
My dad and his Stetson, the latest copy of The Economist, that day's newspapers, and a book always tucked into the door pocket.
We drove for hours.
We talked about life and family, history, and America.
Sometimes my dad's yellow lab, Max, would jump in the back seat and come with us.
Max, like every dog we ever had, loved my dad the best.
To be in my dad's company was to know safety and love and laughter and kindness.
There's a picture taken several years ago of him in his cowboy hat and jeans in a fleece jacket.
He has his arm around one of his young grandsons who's leaning into his warm embrace.
Looking at that picture last week, my mom put it best when she said that's what he was to all of us.
He was a giant to the end, a lion of a man who loved and served this great republic.
The night before my dad died, the sky above my parents' house filled with clouds in the shape of winged angels.
I had never seen anything like it.
It seemed, indeed, that angels and archangels and all the company of heaven had come to watch over him.
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