Happy Birthday America!

I just come in from being outside our home and watching our neighborhood celebrates our nation’s 237th birthday. This first 4th of July in Florida had streams of colors from all parts of the rainbow. The reports of the smallest firecrackers, sizzling sparklers and huge blasting skyrockets, all from backyard BBQ’s to town sponsored shows, fireworks were sounding and lighting up the sky. The street became thick with the smell of powder and a smoky haze developed. It was then I thought back to what I read about John Adams and what he meant when he stated, “the nation should celebrate the freedoms they gained when becoming a nation and gaining its liberty”.  I was here today, to see this festive display, but how?

 

Thinking back to my 8th Great Grandparents, Joseph and Mary Bolles, I wondered if they realized, that through their actions, leaving England and coming to a distant wilderness of what was a British colony in 1640’s, their descendants a few generations later, would be part of establishing a new country with the freedom and liberties they had not have.  Did my 4th Great Grandfather, Amos Terrill, who served in the NJ militia during the Revolutionary War, dream that he and his fellow patriots were giving their descendants and people from other nations a place that their dreams and aspirations would have the opportunity to becomes part of what America is today?

Whether our ancestors were rich or poor, educated or not, freemen or indentured, farmer, merchant, whaler, dressmaker, clerk, clergy, journalist, teacher, blacksmith, student or homemaker, they owe our thanks for the life’s that they lived, the hardships they faced, the drive that they had and the ideals they upheld.

It is for those reasons, I and my family, my neighbors and friends, live in a nation that gives us the opportunities to go where we like, do what we wish, say what we believe, live the life’s we wish and still know as was stated in the Declaration of Independence, “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”

Happy Birthday America…. May God Bless you now and Always.