There will be a lot of festivities this month to celebrate America’s 250th birthday. As you participate in the various celebrations, I encourage you to think about all of the people who have shaped the history of our country. I think about the Founding Fathers and how they were the ancestors to many men and women who have contributed to American culture over the last 250 years. I think about elected officials, military personnel, educators, religious leaders, scientists, inventors, laborers, philanthropists, advocates, musicians, artists, and writers who have shaped the American story.

 

I would love to have a conversation with people who lived through the Revolutionary War or the Civil War. What was life like for them? What were their hopes and dreams? What would they say about contemporary American culture? This desire to learn from our ancestors should be a reminder that we must continue to tell the story so that future generations will understand the past.

 

One of my college English professors, Dr. Phil Billings, wrote some poems based on interviews he did with veterans in Lebanon County. He compiled those poems into a two-volume book as a way to preserve their stories for future generations. Following his death last year, his widow gave me a copy of one of the two volumes. The poems tell the story that these veterans experienced during their service and their return home. As I have perused the poems, it helps me to understand another perspective of the American story.

 

As we celebrate America’s 250th birthday, I share a poem by Walt Whitman (1819-1892). Many of Whitman’s contemporaries called him “America’s poet”. This poem lifts up the people who formed the fabric of America.

 

                                        I Hear America Singing (1860)
I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear,
Those of mechanics, each one singing his as it should be blithe and strong,
The carpenter singing his as he measures his plank or beam,
The mason singing his as he makes ready for work, or leaves off work,
The boatman singing what belongs to him in his boat, the deckhand singing on the steamboat deck,
The shoemaker singing as he sits on his bench, the hatter singing as he stands,
The wood-cutter’s song, the ploughboy’s on his way in the morning, or at noon intermission or at sundown,
The delicious singing of the mother, or of the young wife at work, or of the girl sewing or washing,
Each singing what belongs to him or her and to none else,
The day what belongs to the day—at night the party of young fellows, robust, friendly,
Singing with open mouths their strong melodious songs.