By Navy League National President David J. Reilly
This is blog post appears in the July/August issue of Seapower magazine, the official magazine of the Navy League of the United States.
As our sea service leadership, corporate members and sponsors, international partners and Navy League members convene at Sea-Air-Space 2021 this August — one of the first large-scale conferences for the maritime industry in over a year and a half — our entire organization, from the field to headquarters, is fully back to face-to-face business.
Thanks in part to my national president predecessor Bill Stevenson, we are fortunate to have inherited a Navy League that, through hard work and perseverance, thrived through what were challenging years for many organizations. Like many of you, we both share a reverence for the thought leadership of the Navy League’s founding father, President Theodore Roosevelt. One of his most prescient sentiments discussed the importance of daring to act: “It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming. …”
In my short time as president-elect and now national president, I’ve been struck with our organization’s gusto. At our May region meeting in North Dakota, members came from far and wide across the Midwest. The field is energized and ready to take our mission to the next level.
Focusing on our mission will be our primary goal for the coming two years. We must continue to be the premier organization and innovate to outpace all others, in our education, advocacy and support of the sea services. We must keep all our focus and energy on this goal. We have done an outstanding job of this in the past, as is evident by our organization’s upcoming 120th anniver-sary of our founding. But we must continue to dare to act, to enter the arena and strive for maximum support of our sea services to continue to grow and progress in the name of our mission.
It is an honor to be a Navy Leaguer and to serve as your national president. Mission-first and field-focused.