ARLINGTON, Va. — Six years ago, David Bryan, a 53-year-old federal worker from Kansas City, Mo., helped rescue a man from a burning Missouri Highway Patrol car on Interstate 70 near Higginsville, Mo., after it was struck by a 1-ton pickup.
So on National Medal of Honor Day, Bryan and two others received the Congressional Medal of Honor Foundation's second annual "Above & Beyond Citizen Honors."
The ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery on Wednesday recognized 35 recipients of the Medal of Honor, the nation's highest military award. It also commended acts of courage by civilians such as Bryan.
They "remind us that every one of us has the capacity for tremendous courage and heroism," said the foundation's Robert Howard, a Medal of Honor recipient and Green Beret during the Vietnam War.
Other recipients were Jeremy Hernandez, a 22-year-old Minnesota youth worker; and Rick Rescorla of New Jersey, a security official killed on Sept. 11, 2001.
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Hernandez saved more than 50 children in August 2007 when the Interstate 35W bridge collapsed in Minneapolis. Rescorla was a 62-year-old security official at Morgan Stanley Dean Witter when hijacked planes struck the World Trade Center. He evacuated thousands of people from the burning towers but wasn't seen again after they collapsed.
His son and daughter accepted the award.
"Heroes" has become a pretty shopworn label of late.
But if there is evidence to be found of heroism anywhere in the nation's capital, it's across the Potomac River, on a patch of rolling green meadows overlooking the city that enshrines lives that were lost.
The ceremony took place just down the hill from the Tomb of the Unknowns.
Moments earlier, President Obama had laid a wreath at the tomb, accompanied by four Medal of Honor recipients.
He gave no speech, only his quiet thanks to each of the 35 highly decorated veterans as he shook hands and patted their shoulders before leaving.
