By Ron Lora

In thinking about “America 250,” my mind immediately jumps to its ideals, beginning with the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, 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.”  

Those beautiful words defined a revolutionary moment in history. They sparked a radical revolution producing a singular democratic society in which common people, beyond the confines of race or religion, could pursue lives outside the dictates of kings or lords or class. 

Last month during a trip to Washington, D.C., I revisited the Lincoln Memorial to read two inscriptions that so moved me on a senior class trip seventy years ago. Engraved on the south wall is President Lincoln's most famous speech, the Gettysburg Address: “Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal…. that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom – and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

On the north interior wall is engraved Lincoln’s second inaugural address, delivered 41 days before his assassination. With eloquence and deep moral clarity, he avoided triumphant celebration in the closing days of the Civil War, and instead emphasized forgiveness, unity, and  a pragmatic call to action: "With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan – to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations." 

We often fall short of our ideals. We think of the original sin of slavery, segregation and the Alien and Sedition Acts up through the mid-19th century Know Nothings, 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, the 1921 Emergency Quota Act, and the more recent raids and deportations. At such times the warmth of openness falls victim to nativism.  

Yet at this moment I think of ideals learned during my school days. In Miss Theresa Slusser’s history class at Bluffton High School, I encountered Emma Lazarus’s poem that during a senior class trip seventy years ago I saw engraved on the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me.” With torch raised high, it said to impoverished refugees from Old Europe and elsewhere that the U.S. was a protector of exiles who are welcome here to begin life anew.   

 America has gained from the efforts of hundreds of heroes,  beginning with George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and Benjamin Franklin to represent the founding  generation;  followed in time by Abraham Lincoln; Frederick Douglass (Escaped slave and leading abolitionist); Susan B. Anthony  (Pioneer of the women's suffrage movement);  Mark Twain (Venerated for democratizing American prose); Eleanor Roosevelt (First Lady and world traveler on behalf  of human rights and poor people);  Martin Luther King, Jr. (Nonviolent leader against racial segregation and inequality); Jackie Robinson  (First black man to play major league baseball);  and Neil Armstrong (“That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”) 

Not least in my celebratory visions is the small, close-knit village of Bluffton, Ohio, my hometown. The Bluffton Icon has alerted citizens and out-of-town visitors about multiple events to celebrate the Fourth of July on America’s 250^th year at Bluffton to celebrate 4th of July with living history, music and parade.

Altogether, a full day of fun, traditions, and neighborly connections in a small Midwestern town.