Biden honors police officers and veterans with medals at White House

WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden on Friday recognized five Nashville police officers and seven U.S. Army veterans with national medals honoring their acts of bravery.

The police officers, who responded to a deadly school shooting in Tennessee in 2023, were among the eight recipients of the Medal of Valor, the nation’s highest award for valor by a public safety officer. The president said it was being given in recognition of the officers’ acts of selflessness in attempting to save or protect human life.

“They saved children — they saved people in serious distress,” Biden told reporters after the Oval Office ceremony, which was closed to the public. “They literally put their lives at risk — some of them at the point that you wonder how they could have had the nerve to do it.”

Later on Friday, Biden read the names of seven people receiving the Medal of Honor, the military’s highest award, and solemnly observed that he was making the announcement for a final time as commander in chief.

“These are genuine-to-their-core heroes — heroes of different ranks, different positions, and even different generations, but heroes who all went above and beyond the call of duty,” he said.

Six of the men were honored posthumously, with their relatives accepting the medals on their behalf. They included five Korean War veterans — Pvt. Bruno R. Orig, Pfc. Wataru Nakamura, Cpl. Fred B. McGee, Pfc. Charles R. Johnson and Richard E. Cavazos, then a first lieutenant — and one Vietnam War veteran, Capt. Hugh R. Nelson Jr.

The crowd stood and applauded when Spc. 4th Class Kenneth J. David, the sole living honoree, received his medal from Biden.

The police officers honored with the Medal of Valor on Friday were part of a group that raced to the Covenant School, a private Christian school in Nashville, in March 2023 in the minutes after the first 911 calls from the school. Three 9-year-old students, as well as three staff members, were killed in the gunfire.

Law enforcement officials, families and staff members at the school have praised the response by the police department for stopping further carnage. Body camera footage showed the officers quickly running into the school and confronting the assailant, killing the shooter about 14 minutes after the first call.

Some of the officers were assigned to a station near the school, while others happened to be in the area and responded to the calls.

Speaking to reporters in the days after the shooting, Sgt. Jeff Mathes, one of the officers, said “our job is to run towards it,” a sentiment that the White House highlighted in its announcement of the honorees.

“All of us stepped over a victim,” he said, recounting what happened. “To this day, I don’t know how I did that morally, but training is what kicked in.”

The Medal of Valor is one of several national, state and local accolades that have been given to the group. Families of the surviving students have also credited the men with ensuring that their children survived.

“They deserve the world,” said Sarah Shoop Neumann, a parent of a Covenant student who became an outspoken gun control advocate in the aftermath of the shooting.

Bestowing the award has been a point of personal pride for Biden, who as a senator cosponsored the legislation that established the medal in 2001. He often handed out the award while serving as vice president under President Barack Obama.

Biden presented two more Medals of Valor on Friday, to Brendan Gaffney and Lt. John Vanderstar of the New York Fire Department, who saved children from burning buildings in separate incidents. The final medal was presented to Sgt. Tu Tran, a police officer in Lincoln, Nebraska, who pulled a drowning woman from a water-filled car in February.

Along with the medals recognizing service, the president honored recipients of the National Medal of Science and the National Medal of Technology and Innovation on Friday, celebrating breakthroughs in climate science, health care and astrophysics.

Along with the 23 people who received one of the two prizes, Biden awarded the National Medal of Technology and Innovation Organization to two companies: Moderna and Pfizer, in recognition of their development of coronavirus vaccines during the pandemic.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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