Patriot games

Torri Huske is an 18 year-old swimmer from Arlington, Virginia. At this year’s Summer Olympic Games, she finished fourth in the 100-meter butterfly final, just one one-hundredth of a second behind Emma McKeon of Australia.

Huske came back to win a silver medal in the 4×100-meter medley relay, along with Regan Smith, Lydia Jacoby, and Abbey Weitzeil.

Huske graduated from high school this year and will soon be headed to Stanford. She’s likely to be a major force at the next Olympics in three years.

Huske is a patriot with even more reason than most to love America. According to this story in the Washington Post, her mother Ying is a native of China whose family was “relocated” during the Cultural Revolution. Eventually, she made it to the U.S. and, following college, worked for the U.S. Navy in IT.

When her daughter Torri made the Olympic Team, Ying said, “I feel like I’m living out my American Dream.”

A Power Line reader from Arlington who has known Huske since she was little calls her “a level-headed young woman who has a bright future ahead of her” and “a compelling story of devotion to the United States and what it represents.”

When Huske returned home from Tokyo, her high school friends threw a surprise welcome home party for her. Here’s an account of it in the local press.

On Instagram, Huske said:

So grateful for my first Olympic experience and the people that made it so special. There is no better team on earth and no country I’d rather represent. Thank you everyone that helped me get to this point in my life.

This sentiment is pretty typical of what I heard other U.S. athletes say at this year’s Olympics.

Our Power Line reader was at the welcome home party. He reports:

[The party was] complete with a 60 foot American flag hoisted by the Arlington Fire Department and lights and sirens provided by the Arlington Police Department. It was an evening of pure joy and celebration—with no sign of wokism. It was perfectly patriotic with the kids waving American flags and chanting “U-S-A.” It actually brought a tear to my I eye as I watched.

I guess there is reason for hope, after all.

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