WHAT AMERICA MEANS TO ME

July 4, 1776 was the day that the Declaration of Independence was publicly read and officially released in Philadelphia, PA.  John Adams thought the 2^nd would be celebrated because that was the day the Declaration was adopted by the Continental Congress.  But the public adopted the day they learned of it.  That was the day that colonists began to become Americans. Now two hundred and thirty five years later, Americans need to reflect on what being a citizen of this country means to them.

What does America mean to me?  I was born an American because my mother and father were Americans living in New York (Queens County) when I was born.  My father’s ancestors first arrived here in the 1600's and many fought in the Revolution and Civil War.  He left high school in his northwest Georgia town shortly after Pearl Harbor and enlisted in the Coast Guard.  That branch of service, like the others, saw action in Europe; in fact my Dad was at the invasion of Normandy in June 1944.  He served until his discharge in August 1945.  He met my mother in New York, when he was on leave.  They married and he stayed in New York where they raised a family.  My mother was a naturalized citizen having been born in Germany and coming to America with her family in the 1920's.

As a youngster, growing up in the 1950's, I went to public school where I got to know other kids of different backgrounds (all white).  I went to church on Sunday and was a Protestant (Methodist) and began to learn the differences between of Protestant denominations and between them and Catholics and Jews.  The biggest difference to a youngster was that the Catholic kids got to go to leave school early to go to religious instruction on Wednesday afternoons and the Jewish kids had different holidays.  But everyone was an American and we learned the same Pledge of Allegiance and the same things about our country’s history.

My parents worked and we lived a typical middle class ex-urban life style.  I read what I wanted to and watched what we could on TV (at first small black and white).  Eventually I went to college and studied what I wanted to.  In 1956 I watched the Democratic convention on TV and then gave out flyers for Stevenson and in 1960 debated for JFK at my high school (named after a Democratic President Grover Cleveland.)

So my introduction to America was positive.  I did read a tome at the Library by Gunnar Myrdal called The American Dilemma and was made aware of the racial discrimination in our country against black citizens.  Of course as a teenager I lived through the 1960's and saw the ultimate triumph of the civil rights revolution.

 

So to me America means the opportunity to learn, to work, to earn money and spend it on things you want to - to go to church or not as you like,- to support or oppose any candidate or idea as you decide.  We never had to ask permission of any government entity to do any of these things. Unlike some countries the government didn’t try to tell us which sports teams to root for or what religion to believe or which to hate.

And the American story we learned in school starting with the Cavaliers and the Pilgrims was one of constant progress.  Progress in building a country, expanding its boundaries, creating transcontinental railroads, laying oceanic cables, and inventing things like the telephone, the record player, the electric light bulb, the car and the television.  America was this exceptional place, this color blind (after 1965 we thought) society where everyone could rise as far as his or her talents could take them.   And as for as the rest of the world there were the Nazis and Fascists we beat, the communists who wanted to impose their Godless vision of society upon people, the poverty stricken nations of the third world, -- how could anyone by the mid 60's not love being an American.

By 1966 I was twenty years old and I was glad my parents were Americans and I was proud to be one. With all that has happened since then I’m still proud of my country and my heritage.  It was Commodore Stephen Decatur who said “Our country!  In her intercourse with foreign nations, may she always be in the right; but our country, right or wrong.”

I believe that when our government is wrong we should work to correct it and when it’s right we should strongly support it. That’s what I’ve tried to do my entire adult life, mostly in public or political office. 

I hope and pray that this America I have grown to love: a nation of compassionate people, a country of boundless opportunity and a society where we cherish the freedoms that should be available to all, will remain such for countless years to come. And, my children (who have some forty plus years before them) and my grandchildren (with eighty years ahead) and their children, my great-grandchildren, will always have cause to be proud to be Americans.

July 4, 2011