Closing Ceremony in Anchorage

This is an edited version Dan Pallotta's speech at closing ceremonies.   It was transcribed by Cathy Connelly, Rider #96 from her video tape of the ceremony and was  one of the most memorable events of the ride. 
It is worth reading!

Kevin Honeycutt introduction�
The gentleman that I get the pleasure of introducing, you already know.  He is a visionary, he is the creator of the Alaska AIDS Vaccine Ride, and he is Rider 181.  Ladies and gentlemen, Dan Pallotta.

Dan�
Thank you, everybody�..
The VacScene this morning said the route was what? (Audience: Flat!)
Didn't look flat to me, look flat to you? (Audience: No!)

[They] were determined to put an end to apartheid in South Africa.  Or those little students standing in front of the tanks in Tiannemen Square.  People have made the ultimate sacrifice for the cause of their country or their kind.

And when we first started the California AIDS Ride, I would ask myself and I would ask people who were considering registering�for what will our generation be remembered?  Will we remembered for responding with everything we have to the crises of our age, or will we be remembered only for gestures, or worse than that, will we be remembered for nothing at all?

Well today, with you, each of you 1,498 people, we have an answer to that question. 
You will be remembered for greatness.  You will be remembered for struggling.  You will be remembered for suffering alongside those who suffer. 
Alongside people like Peter Cervante who we all met on Tuesday night�whose brother and his
brother's wife both died of AIDS in Uganda and he's now taking care of their four children on top of the six children that he already has. 
You will not be remembered just for responding to the crisis of your time but for going above and beyond the call of duty.

Abraham Lincoln in his Gettysburg Address said that "the world will little note nor long remember what is said here.  But it can never forget what those souls who here gave their lives did here."

The world will not forget what you all did here this week.  And by the world, I don't mean this ambiguous, huge abstraction.  The world is made up of people. 

Some of you are in your 20s and in your 30s.  You're gonna have children.  You're gonna have
grand-children.  You're gonna have great-grandchildren. 

And those children will say,  "My mom rode across Alaska to help find a vaccine for AIDS."

And they'll say, "My grandfather," fifty years from now, "rode across Alaska to find a cure for this thing that was called AIDS." 

And they'll say, "My great-grandfather rode across Alaska�"

And for those of us that are gay or lesbian who may not have�...children of our own��They will say, "My father had a friend�"

They will say, "I had an uncle�who rode across Alaska to find a vaccine for AIDS."
And they will be inspired by that.

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