ARLINGTON, Va. -- Three days after Election Day, Barack Obama used his last Veterans Day speech as president to urge Americans to learn from the example of veterans as a divided nation seeks to "forge unity" after the bitter 2016 campaign.
Obama, in remarks at Arlington National Cemetery, noted that Veterans Day often comes on the heels of hard-fought campaigns that "lay bare disagreements across our nation."
"But the American instinct has never been to find isolation in opposite corners," Obama said. "It is to find strength in our common creed, to forge unity from our great diversity, to maintain that strength and unity even when it is hard.
"We can show how much we love our country by loving our neighbors as ourselves," Obama said.
He added that now that the election is over, "as we search for ways to come together, to reconnect with one another and with the principles that are more enduring than transitory politics, some of our best examples are the men and women we salute on Veterans Day."
Obama noted that the U.S. military is the country's most diverse institution, comprised of immigrants and native-born service members representing all religions and no religion. He says they are all "forged into common service."
With just two months left in his term, Obama also noted how he's aged over the past eight years.
He read excerpts from an essay by a middle-schooler who wrote that veterans are special because they will defend people regardless of their race, gender, hair color or other differences.
"After eight years in office, I particularly appreciate that he included hair color," Obama quipped.
Turning serious again on his final Veterans Day as commander in chief, Obama said that "whenever the world makes you cynical, whenever you doubt that courage and goodness and selflessness is possible, then stop and look to a veteran."
The president defended his administration's record on veterans issues, noting that he had increased funding for the Department of Veterans Affairs by 85 percent over the course of his two terms in office, improved access to mental health services and cut veteran homelessness in half. He urged his successor to continue work on the tragedy of veteran suicides, which claims 20 lives a day, and to resist calls to outsource and privatize the VA.
"On Veterans Day, we acknowledge humbly that we can never serve our veterans in quite the same way that they served us, but we can try. We can practice kindness, we can pay it forward, we can volunteer, we can serve, we can respect one another, we can always get each other's backs," he said.
Before speaking, the president laid a wreath at the cemetery's Tomb of the Unknowns. He bowed his head in silent tribute before a bugler played taps.
Obama also held a breakfast reception at the White House with veterans and their families.
In Indiana, Vice President-elect Mike Pence delivered remarks at the Indiana National Guard's Camp Atterbury, recalling his late father's modesty over his Korean War service during a Veterans Day.
Reporters were kept at a distance.
Pence, currently Indiana's governor, told about 200 people that he and others who didn't serve in the military should be especially grateful to those such as his father and his son, who became a Marine Corps officer last year.
Elsewhere, two Tuskegee Airmen were awarded the Congressional Gold Medal at a Friday ceremony in Geneseo, N.Y., for service more than 70 years ago.
Wallace Higgins, 91, and Herbert Thorpe, 93, were members of the the Army Air program that trained black men to fly and maintain combat aircraft during World War II.
"I don't cry easy, but I do today," Higgins said inside the National Warplane Museum's hangar against a backdrop of historic military planes.
Thorpe, who earned B-25 pilot's wings in 1945 and was one of the military's first black pilots, also accepted a medal on behalf of his brother, Richard Thorpe, who completed fighter pilot training but died in a crash in Italy in 1945.
Relatives of two other Tuskegee Airmen accepted medals on their behalf from Rep. Chris Collins, R-N.Y., during Friday's ceremony, which was attended by about 200 people. Flight Officer Leland Pennington, a member of the 301st fighter squadron, died while returning to base after a 1945 bomber escort mission in Austria. Robert Johnson also was killed in action in 1944.
"These brave men undoubtedly laid the foundation for change so future generations can serve in our armed service no matter their race or ethnicity," said Collins, whose late father was a World War II veteran.
Former President George W. Bush presented the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest civilian award given by Congress, to the Tuskegee Airmen as a group in 2007, entitling individual members to receive bronze replicas.
Information for this article was contributed by Darlene Superville, Nancy Benac, Carolyn Thompson and staff members of The Associated Press and by Greg Jaffe of The Washington Post.
A Section on 11/12/2016