I found the 4th

The Fourth found me standing for the Star-Spangled Banner and singing along with everyone else in the movie theater on Davis-Monthan Air Force Base when I was seven. Including fighter pilots and their families. I forget the movie.

I found the Fourth of July in the Miranda Rights a cop read to me in 1972 when I had a terrible accident for which I was blameless. When someone tells you you have the right to remain silent you understand the meaning of liberty.

The Fourth of July found me when I took a Constitutional Law night class at a community college in Norfolk taught by a young conservative Navy Commander who loved the Constitution so much you couldn’t help but catch his Federalist Papers fever.

I found the Fourth in Williamsburg, the village, among colonial re-enactors, my favorite, a trucker from North Carolina.

I found the Fourth in the air, flying cross country at night by happenstance and looking down at the fireworks that were popping up over every small town in America.

I found the Fourth sitting in the Rose Garden with other cartoonists listening to President Ronald Reagan’s entertaining remarks and marveling at a free society where its leaders must publicly embrace its satirists and critics while their congress is investigating them.

I found the Fourth in the voting booth. Every time.

I found the Fourth in my brother’s nearly forty-year old photos from Vietnam. Support our troops.

I found the Fourth in Martin’s ghost on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis. And I felt the Fourth of July at Jefferson’s Monticello, Ford’s Theater, the steps on the Lincoln memorial and the cell where Jefferson Davis was held. Sic Semper Tyrannus.

I found the Fourth in the Newport News shipyard watching an Aircraft Carrier being launched while a Navy band played Sousa.

I found the Fourth in a room full of elderly holocaust survivors

I found the Fourth in the Truman Library, where my young son met a Harry Truman actor in the gift shop and later asked me, “What was Harry Truman doing hanging out at his museum. Doesn’t he have stuff to do?”

I found the Fourth in my daughter’s eyes and in my son-in-law’s eyes in a nation and time where a mixed-race couple could marry.

I found the Fourth in my LGBT friends who rode the long moral arc of the Universe to a brighter day.

I found the Fourth when I found my old 9/11 car window flag in my memento trunk.

I found the Fourth standing below the old North Church where, on that day, the only British that were coming, were tourists.

I found the 4th when I was a kid drawing for the Daily Press and I was cast in a bio pic about General Washington as a colonial extra for the Yorktown battle scenes and the surrender of Cornwallis’ troops.

Fifes and drums give me chills.

Brown versus the Board of Education. I saw the Fourth when I saw Monroe Elementary in Topeka. Revolution.

The Fourth found me at the Nixon Presidential Library, walking through the Watergate tunnel and enjoying a grave site conversation with My Fellow American.