Friends and colleagues of the New Orleans Passport Agency:

It is a privilege, an honor, and a deeply moving experience for me to be here today.  Together, today, we look ahead to the promise this gathering portends.  Together, today, perhaps we will also share a tale and shed a tear for what this noble city and its good people have endured.  Most importantly though, together, today, we can say, “We’re back.” And Lord, doesn’t it feel good.

Three years ago I had the privilege of visiting New Orleans for the first time as Assistant Secretary, one month into the job.  I came in part to speak to a national service organization on the subjects of friendship, duty and service.  I also came to visit my first passport agency.

Both at that convention and here in these offices, I saw a vibrant group of people working every day to do the right thing: to take care of people; to touch lives through a shared commitment to doing good by being good.  On an unnaturally warm December day, I walked the French Quarter, thankful for the gifts of the day.  With a heavier heart, I will nonetheless do so again before this day is through, because I am still grateful.  I am grateful that our workforce--my colleagues are here today, in person or in spirit.  I am grateful that the long road to a better place will bear the milestone of today’s ceremonial coming home.  I am so grateful to be among you.

Katrina and its aftermath may have necessitated the evacuation and temporary closure of the New Orleans Agency, but in a very real sense the Department of State never left this city.

Our first thoughts were for you, our colleagues and friends.  At State, we spent days trying to locate each and every one of you to make sure that all were safe.  As the scale of the devastation became clear, I was deeply moved by the outpouring of support from colleagues who opened their hearts and gave generously to the Employee Emergency Relief Fund.  We were all especially touched that Foreign Service national colleagues from Papua New Guinea, a humble group from a humble society, contributed $189.00 to you, the friends they will never know.  Secretary Rice personally reached out to Darryl and Carolyn, reaching Carolyn in Arkansas to express her concern.  She has never stopped asking about you. 

Within days of the hurricane, 42 colleagues, led by Deputy Assistant Secretary Frank Moss, had suited up and hit the highway in a heroic and successful effort to secure blank passports, cases in progress, and the other valuable documents and material so familiar to all of us.  Your colleagues in Charleston, joined by employees from agencies across the country, set the land speed record for pushing 120,000 plus cases out the door within weeks of the recovery effort. “New Orleans North,” as we came to call it, was infused with the spirit of the one and only true New Orleans.

And as your colleagues made their way through the work of their sister agency, it was done in a spirit of camaraderie, of concern, as a gesture of service–yes–to those seeking a passport, but as a gesture of reverence for the work of our colleagues, so cruelly disrupted.

I believe that the recovery of this city will stand on such efforts, as authorities and private citizens at all levels, in all fields, work together to restore housing, employment, and opportunity.  We hope today’s ceremony informs that effort.

We gather today to open ceremonially the doors of the New Orleans passport agency and to write the next chapter in its rich history.  We started in this city on August 6, 1921.  Since then, this agency has grown steadily and become indispensable to the Department of State’s ability to deliver secure, courteous, and efficient Passport services to the American public.  Eighty-four years later, this agency came to handle almost 1/5 of the total passport workload nationwide, providing services to 14 states, including some as far away as Ohio, and to the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico.  You have built relationships with some 1,400 acceptance facilities to enable an even higher level of service to the American people.  You have the dedication and the talent to continue this fine tradition of service.  And we want to see you come roaring back to your rightful place among the agencies.  And we will be with you every step of the way.

In a special message to congress, President Harry S Truman, whose name graces our headquarters in Washington, told our elected representatives: “America was not built of fear.  America was built on courage, on imagination and on an unbeatable determination to do the job at hand.”
 

In the past few months, you have been called upon in every way to demonstrate courage and heart and imagination.  You will not and have not been beaten.  And we will walk with you on the long road to come. 

Today is a special day--a milestone. I hope and we’ll look for others.  I thank you for sharing it with all of us gathered today to honor you.  God bless.