INDEPENDENCE DAY 2013. ON THE ROAD AGAIN. MANCHESTER-BY-THE-SEA. AND A GRANDE DAME WITH THE GIFT OF FRIENDSHIP AND JOY. COME AND GET ACQUAINTED.

Author’s program note. July 4th, Independence Day commenced when
13 fractious colonies decided to sunder the greatest empire on earth…
challenging every verity of governance in order to raise up a pristine
nation where “all men are created equal.”

From this signal phrase, Godlike in its ringing clarity and unanswerable in its
adamantine proposition, everything else has flowed… making Columbia truly the
gem of the ocean and Independence Day an event calling for the full attention
and participation of all.

For on July 4, 1776 a handful of righteous people, fortified by the mightiest ideas on
Earth, changed everything… as every monarch and potentate everywhere soon came
to know, to their eternal detriment… and as millions worldwide thrilled to discover and
bless America as much as any Citizen of the Great Republic. Oh, yes, Columbia was
the “shrine of each patriot’s devotion” from the very moment of each new patriot’s birth,
when they became Citizens and as such those who had the responsibility for fostering
their great creation, even unto death itself.

For such a grand event a grand sound is needed. And so I give you one of the
greatest of our national anthems, “Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean.” Lyrics and
melody were written by Thomas a Becket, a fact his colleague David T. Shaw
disputed, claiming the work as his own. Becket proved his authorship by means of
his original handwritten composition. Shaw’s skullduggery did, however, prove one
thing: that its tune, its lyrics, and the effect it had on people everywhere (starting with
covetous Shaw) proved that it was one of America’s treasures, eminently suitable for “The
home of the brave and the free.”

Go now to any search engine and find this stirring melody and its sharply etched words, a
paean not merely to a geographical entity, but, far more important, to what these bountiful
acres stand for in the affairs of men and their human destiny. Listen to the lyrics for they cut
deep, incised in each Citizen, never to be forgotten, always to be cherished from
sea to shining sea. I like the version orchestrated and sung by the Mormon Tabernacle
Choir. It makes me proud to be an American. Go find it now and let the stupendous
rhythms flow over you as heaven’s balm. For they are surely that.

Independence Day, July 4, 1962, Illinois.

Right from its first celebration Independence Day was meant to be the most
important civic event of the year, the day when business stopped and the great
events of the Great Republic were regarded, remembered, revered, recalled in
every detail because each detail was a significant and honored part of the
monumental event. Each counted. Every person associated with them counted.
Even the smallest act deserved recognition and on July 4th such recognition was
freely given. No more so than in Downers Grove, Illinois.

A village  in Downers Grove and Lisle Townships,  a model of post war
homogeneity and life.

Picture for a moment a metropolis of some 12,000 souls (since grown to nearly
50,000) where the objective was unity, not divisiveness. Where there would be no
titans of industry and plutuocrats of unimaginable wealth; neither would there be
poverty whether blatant or hidden. Instead its residents would strive for similarity of
income and of lifestyle, all men truly equal, the Declaration of Independence wrought
in ranch homes and acres of grass for young Citizens like me to cut on a hot summer
day.

Downers Grove (the lack of the expected apostrophe a quirk the town fathers were
certain gave panache to their enterprise and refused to alter) was founded in
1832 by Pierce Downer. He was a religious evangelist from New York. Other early
settlers included the Blodgett, Curtiss, and Carpenter families, names given to
the main streets, for townspeople liked their history, even though (or perhaps because)
there was not so very much of it to learn and that quickly and proudly told.

How abolitionists had found zealous adherents in its free soil.

How there were houses still extant that served as stops on the Underground Railroad
moving runaway slaves in dead of night to a new life, a free life.

How 119 soldiers served in the Union Army during the American Civil War.

How the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad was extended from Aurora to
Chicago through Downers Grove in 1862, boosting its population as newcomers
came to claim their portions of the leafy lanes, the quiet prosperity, neighbors who
were neighborly and where local boys and girls grew up together, married each other
and did not just pursue happiness, but found it.

It was these people who were now busily at work on what was to be not only my last
Illinois Independence Day but the last such day we were all united, Citizens and world,
offering “homage to thee”, Columbia, and our confident mission of freedom, liberty, progress,
and brotherhood.

It is achingly clear in my mind’s eye….

… the civic worthies (including my grandfather) gathered on the reviewing stand on Main
Street, swapping stories and flasks of aged favorites. They were not merely the solons
of our village but each a veteran who had helped America when America needed help.
Behind them in the shade in hats and gloves sat their ladies, the women, however frail
they may have looked, who had demonstrated grit and fortitude while their men were away
on the nation’s far-flung battlefields. In those worrisome days they knew secret despair, but
their genius kept it from the children who were their unceasing focus.

Then the bandmaster, resplendent in Ruritanian uniform, raised his baton to signify America
and the great State of Illinois were on fete… and the band marched smartly ahead, down
flag festooned Main Street and into the recesses of my mind. That day I watched them in high
glee, happy… today I know that this was the last unclouded tableau before the President
was killed… before the war sundered the nation and made acrimony, not amity, our daily
portion. I know this, but all the patriotic residents of Dowers Grove, so many of whom
celebrated the day by marching in the town’s parade, did not. They were marching, as
we all march, into a future they must live to know, a future that challenged, threatened,
and changed everything they believed in and to which they renewed their allegiance
this day of remembrance, rededication, and high resolve.

One era ends, another begins, this is the way of people and the nations which reflect them.

Just days after Independence Day, my father removed his family from Downers Grove to
accept a better job in Los Angeles. There, just a few months later on the school’s basketball
court, I learned of the President’s assassination. This was the beginning of a train of epochal events. One of its many casualties was the scene so reminiscent of Currier & Ives I saw in
all its beauty my last prairie Independence Day. Now gone forever. Columbia, the gem of the ocean, “The boast of the red, white and blue” sailed on to triumphs and tragedies but its great
unities, unities that forged glorious destiny, were no longer present but merely aspects of history.

We need them so today. And cannot be truly great again, a cynosure for a world  that needs
it, until we are united again.