By Elizabeth Barhydt
This week, our 250th anniversary series turns to Admiral Lisa Franchetti, U.S. Navy, retired, whose career widened the record of American service. According to the U.S. Navy, Franchetti became the first woman to serve as Chief of Naval Operations and the first woman to serve on the Joint Chiefs of Staff when she was sworn in as the Navy’s 33rd chief on Nov. 2, 2023. In a 2024 interview, Franchetti noted that when she joined the Navy, “there were a lot of laws in place” that did not allow women to serve in combatant positions that could lead to the Navy’s top post. She said that when those laws and policies changed, she was able “to walk right through those doors.”
Each week until July 4, this column will mark the nation’s 250th by looking at service, sacrifice, citizenship, and the Americans who carried those obligations forward. This week’s column begins with Franchetti’s remarks at the American Red Cross Ruby Red & White Ball on April 25 held in Riverside, where she spoke about the Civil War hospital ship USS Red Rover, Clara Barton, and the enduring duty to show up when others need help. Following are the remarks by Admiral Lisa Franchetti, USN (Ret.).
Thank you so much for the warm welcome, and for this remarkable honor. To the hard working Red Cross team — especially Sophie Garrity and co-chairs Tania and Sophie and William who put so much into this evening — and to everyone in this room who has given your time, your talent, and your treasure to the American Red Cross — thank you.
Looking at the past Red and White Ball programs online, I noticed something that made me smile. Most of the military recipients are from the Army….and I figured out that we’re deep in West Point territory….so I am especially honored to be here as a retired Navy Admiral….because there’s a connection there that goes back further than you might think.
During the Civil War, the U.S. Navy commissioned its first hospital ship — the USS Red Rover — on the Mississippi River. She steamed through combat zones carrying nurses, medicine, and care to people who had nothing. She flew no battle flag. Her mission was not to fight. Her mission was to help.
That was the same mission Clara Barton lived every day on the battlefields of the Civil War. She went where the need was greatest — regardless of risk, regardless of whether anyone told her she was allowed to be there. She called herself a helper. Others called her the Angel of the Battlefield. And in 1881, she built this organization on one powerful idea: when people suffer, someone should show up.
I spent 40 years in the United States Navy. I commanded ships, carrier strike groups, and fleets, and deployed all around the world. And in every assignment, I kept learning the same thing: the measure of any organization isn’t its hardware. It’s whether the people in it take care of each other. Whether they show up.
Whether … when it’s hard, they stay.
The Red Cross is that promise, made real, every day. I have seen your people in places that were not safe. I have watched them help military families navigate emergency notifications, casualties, and crises happening 8,000 miles from home. They don’t ask whether they can afford to help in another crisis. They ask: what do you need? How can I help?
Clara Barton had a phrase she lived by: “You must never think of anything except the need, and how to meet it.” In the Navy, we’d call that “commander’s intent,” and her intent clearly lives on in the American Red Cross today.
Tonight, I am truly humbled by this award. Not because I feel I deserve to stand in the company of the remarkable people in this room — but because receiving an honor like this is a reminder of what we are all here for. Service is not a transaction. It is not something you do when it’s easy or when someone is watching. It is a commitment — renewed every day, in small ways and large — to something larger than yourself.
The Navy taught me that. The American Red Cross lives it.
Congratulations on your Ruby Anniversary! Forty years of this community saying: we show up. We give. We take care of each other.
That’s the spirit of USS Red Rover. That’s the spirit of Clara Barton. And on this 40th anniversary… that is the spirit of every person in this room.
The approach to America’s 250th anniversary asks more than commemoration. It asks citizens to look again at the institutions and habits that carried the country from one generation to the next: the soldier’s willingness to defend constitutional government, the nurse’s decision to enter danger, the volunteer’s refusal to leave suffering unanswered, and the family’s burden when service requires absence, fear, or loss.
Ballou’s letter, published last week, gave us one measure of sacrifice. Franchetti’s remarks give us another measure of duty. “Service is not a transaction,” she said. “It is not something you do when it’s easy or when someone is watching.” The statement is plain, and it is demanding. It defines citizenship not as sentiment, but as conduct. Not as entitlement, but as duty.
