Published: July 04, 2008 12:34 am      

STAWAR: May the Fourth be with you

“You have to love a nation that celebrates its independence, not with a parade of guns, tanks, and soldiers who file by the White House in a show of strength and muscle, but with family picnics where kids throw Frisbees and the potato salad gets iffy...”

— Erma Bombeck

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It has been said that America is the only nation on earth that actually knows its birthday and annually throws itself a party. As a kid the Fourth of July was always the high-water mark of the summer season.

The holiday was first observed July 8, 1776, in Philadelphia with a public reading of The Declaration of Independence, band music, and the tolling of the city bells. The celebration spread throughout the colonies and in 1778 General George ordered a double ration of rum for his troops to commemorate the occasion. My father would have approved. His usual celebration of the Fourth of July could be summed up in two words — “beer tent.”

People began calling the Fourth of July “Independence Day” in 1791 and in 1870 Congress officially declared it a holiday for federal workers. It took another 71 years, however, for government employees to finally get the day off with pay.

In 1830, the nearby Southern Indiana town of Pekin, started what is reputed to be the country’s longest continually running Fourth of July celebration, complete with its legendary parade.

For several years my wife Diane and I went to an Independence Day party that was hosted by Diane’s church friend, Bonnie. This Bonnie character was sort of the Martha Stewart of her day. On the Fourth of July her immaculate house, with its large inviting front porch, was packed full of people, although I always suspected that some of the guests may have been crafted out of crepe paper or decoupage.

Bonnie’s husband was a short, deeply tanned army colonel, who was always running around in khaki shorts. Since he retired he had started his own lawn service. He was pleasant enough, but his elaborately landscaped yard, which made ours look like an unkempt wasteland in comparison, inevitably got under your skin.

Bonnie always planned games for her guests to play, which I usually grumbled about, until the time I won an Eisenhower silver dollar for one of my Magic Marker masterpieces.

One year we took our three-year old son with us to Bonnie’s. Running around the porch he came upon two teenage girls who were blocking his way. They must have thought he was cute and they told him, he could pass, if he said the “magic word.” With more imagination than manners, he immediately said, “abracadabra.” Having to acknowledge that he was technically correct, they were forced to let him pass. Later we had to watch him very closely to make sure he didn’t get too creative running around with one of those 1200 degree sparklers that they were handing out to the kids.

When we lived in Florida we spent the Fourth of July at Disney World, Cypress Gardens, and even at a Detroit Tigers minor league baseball game. Baseball, hot dogs and fireworks all together — it doesn’t get much more American than that.

In more recent years we have watched fireworks in a community park in Bedford after boating on Lake Monroe and from the deck of the historic and majestic Belle of Louisville, the oldest genuine steamboat operating on American rivers today.

But what are we really celebrating with all our fireworks, speeches, parades, and barbeques? America isn’t perfect, no human enterprise ever is, but the strength of America lies not in what it is at any one moment, but rather what it is constantly becoming.

America’s greatness is in the ability of our democracy to be self-correcting. Sometimes the change is agonizingly slow and even spirals, but for every bonehead Dred Scott Decision, there is eventually an Emancipation Proclamation and for every “separate but equal” ruling there comes a Brown vs. Board of Education.

Finally, there is the shared and unfailing American belief in the sanctity of the rights of the individual, regardless of who he or she might be, or how we might personally feel about them. The recent Supreme Court decision that grants the right to foreign detainees, held at Guantanamo Bay, to appeal to U.S. courts to challenge their imprisonment, is simply amazing given the level of national insecurity about the future. It is even more remarkable considering that it came at a time, when we have one of the most conservative Supreme Courts in American history.

But what better way to demonstrate to the world that the terrorists have not won and will never win. Neither by force nor by fear, will we be deprived of our belief in the inalienable rights of all people, thanks to the courage and heroism of brave Americans at home and abroad. Such values are truly the ground spring of our liberty.

Terry L. Stawar, Ed.D. lives in Georgetown and is the CEO of LifeSpring in Jeffersonville, Indiana. He can be reached at tstawar@lifespr.com or 812-206-1234.