Brother’s Legacy Honored as Cadet Achieves Dream

Standing ramrod straight in his dress blues and spit-shined shoes, Air Force Cadet Steven T. Grace raised his right hand under the gray morning sky and recited the words he had waited four years to utter.

“I, Steven Thomas Grace, having been appointed a second lieutenant in the United States Air Force do solemnly swear . . . “

When he entered the rigorous ROTC program at Harvey Mudd College in Claremont, he pictured this ceremony. The formal military color guard would present the flag, the oath of office would be offered, the gold bars of his rank would be pinned to his shoulders.

But Sunday, something was missing. His brother Bill.

”. . . that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States . . .”

Air Force Capt. William Grace, Steven’s eldest brother, was killed in December on a training mission in Alabama. He would have turned 28 this year, and he would have administered this oath to his brother on Sunday.

Instead, the ceremony was performed by Gen. John M. Shalikashvili, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In what was expected to be his last commissioning while in that post, the four-star general offered the oath to nine cadets entering the Air Force and the Army.

”. . . against all enemies foreign and domestic . . .”

Shalikashvili said: “For this old soldier, the commissioning ceremony renews the age-old cycle of military life, bringing new spirit, new vitality, new leaders to our armed forces.” After the commissioning, the general gave the commencement address to the college Sunday afternoon.

Steven Grace, 21, said it was an honor to have the nation’s top officer administer the oath, even though he had planned for his brother to fill that role.

“I’d been looking forward to both of us being officers,” Grace said last week. “We would’ve been brothers in another sense. Saluting my older brother was something I’d been looking forward to, but never got the chance to do.”

”. . . that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same . . .”

The two brothers were not descended from a long line of decorated officers. They simply followed their boyhood dreams. Bill wanted to be a pilot; Steven hopes to become an astronaut.

Bill achieved his aspirations, graduating from the Air Force Academy and flying C-5 transport planes to aid U.S. efforts in Somalia and Bosnia, among other missions. He later became a flight instructor. Now Steven will begin his own career, reporting for duty at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio, in July.

”. . . that I will take this obligation freely and without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion . . .”

There wasn’t much talk of death between Steven and his brother, just a silent acknowledgment.

“He knew what he signed up for. I knew what I signed up for. We didn’t dwell on it,” he said.

Instead, they reveled in the times they spent together. One of the best was a weekend in June 1996, when Bill returned to the family’s Fairport, N.Y., home for a visit before taking his new assignment as a flight instructor based in Pensacola, Fla.

The brothers had the house to themselves. They would wake up, make scrambled eggs, then relax the day away, playing volleyball, splashing around on their Jet Ski. That was the last time Steven saw his brother.

”. . . and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office upon which I am about to enter . . .”

The call came on a Monday morning. It was his father. As Steven recounts it, Bill had been training a navigator at Maxwell Air Force base in Alabama. They had practiced a “wave-off” maneuver, in which a pilot approaches a runway, then pulls away. As Bill Grace tried to pull up from the runway, his plane lost power and crashed. The impact killed Grace and the navigator.

”. . . so help me God.”

Steven finished the oath, marched back to his seat, sat down and swallowed hard.

“It was pretty much sheer bad luck,” Grace said of the crash. “The day he left for the Air Force Academy, we knew that was a life choice, that his life was more at risk.”

Steven Grace wore his dress blues to the memorial service.

On Sunday, he sat in uniform again, and his brother was remembered, this time by Shalikashvili.

“Had he been able to join us here today, I know that he would have been proud to see his brother and the other cadets . . . dedicate themselves to the defense of our great nation, a mission that Capt. Grace readily accepted, performed superbly and felt so very strongly about,” Shalikashvili said. “I salute his dedication and his sacrifice.”

Moments later, after the oath was administered and taken, the cadets rose to have their ranks pinned to their uniforms. Grace strode in front of the podium and stared straight ahead as his mother walked up and stood at his right, his father at his left. They painstakingly pinned the gold bars to his shoulders--just as they had for their son Bill. Steven’s mother embraced him in a long, tight hug, and sat down, smiling.

Robert and Jeanne Grace, who attended the event with their other son David, declined to be interviewed. But they offered a written statement, which read, in part: “The circumstances of Bill’s death underscore the seriousness of the obligations both he and Steven assumed with commissioning. Dreams have a price that must sometimes be paid. Bill knew that, and so does Steven, and so do we.”

When the ceremony ended, Steven and the other cadets took a group picture with Shalikashvili, then broke up to share congratulations, trying to suppress grins as they saluted one another.

“There’s just a lot of pride,” Grace said. “It’s an old, old tradition that I’m part of now.”