We are all Easton’s heritage

I recently received a press release that cited the usual deplorable statistics about how little Americans really know about their country. Being that this is the season of all things patriotic, just having passed Independence Day, this is not all that surprising.

According to the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, only 48 percent of college seniors surveyed correctly identified the Declaration of Independence as the source of the phrase, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.” The release goes on to state that 42 percent of those surveyed thought the source of the phrase was from the preamble of the Constitution. And, that more than 400 students (it does not reveal how many were actually surveyed) apparently identified the phrase’s source as Marx and Engels’ The Communist Manifesto.

So, apparently, if one adds up the numbers, only 90 percent of those surveyed (supposedly America’s best and brightest—they’re college students, right?) correctly identified the phrase as belonging to one of the United States’ key documents, and only slightly more than half of those knew which of those documents it belongs too.

These are sobering thoughts, surely, but this is not a column about the ills of American society. There are plenty of those already, and I’m fairly certain that on the day I decide to return to that topic, there will still be plenty to discuss.

I’m not certain how many of the hundreds who attended Easton’s Heritage Day reading of the Declaration of Independence really knew it well before they arrived. I suspect, from what I observed during the reading, that quite a few not only respect that document but do actually understand and know its contents.

But I’m sure it was far from everyone. If you surveyed the crowd before the event, I’m not sure how well they’d have fared.

Would the results be so different from the ISI’s findings? Probably not, though I think few Eastonians would say “that all men are created equal” originated in Communist Russia.

But whether they can recite the words or not, I know America, the REAL America, is alive and well in Easton.

How do I know this? I saw it myself.

When reenactor Adam Howard got to the parts about tyrants and taxes, the crowd booed both. Unabashedly. Unashamedly.

And not just in fun, due to the spirit of the moment either. It was for real.

The last couple of years, political protesters have quietly and peacefully voiced their opinions with large signs during the event. They too, as far as I am concerned, are a symptom that the democratic principles this nation was founded on are also alive and well in Easton.

When freedom and liberty, and the pursuit of happiness were mentioned, the crowd cheered its approval.

In what now seems like another lifetime, I used to be a reenactor. In fact, I participated in Heritage Day numerous times, in period garb, for half a decade before I moved to Easton. Having been a member of “the hobby” (reenacting) for almost two decades, I’ve seen the Declaration read a countless number of times, both in Easton and elsewhere.

I’ve seen it done well, as well as poorly. (For the record, I’ve enjoyed Howard’s interpretation on all the occasions I’ve seen him.) But the one thing that is unique in Easton is the crowd.

In most places, at most events, though polite, the crowd looks bored. One finds oneself often wondering why they attended.

Perhaps it was supposed to be educational for their children, who upon taking the parental cue, also look bored. Some people inevitably drift off, either mentally, or even physically wander away before the presentation is through.

But Easton is different.

This past Sunday, I saw children watching attentively, nodding, and actually understanding the real meaning and importance of the Declaration of Independence as it was brought to life before them. I watched adults, also rapt in attention, as their faces showed the new meaning the reading gave their country’s founding document, and in some cases, also understanding its true import for the first time.

Perhaps it is that it actually happened here, in Easton, that there is some remnant trace of memory, much more so than is passed down to us in the dusty, tired old history books that most of us have come to equate with the boredom of a banal, required high school history classes, that makes the Declaration’s reading so much more meaningful here that elsewhere.

But I think it is something else too.

A few years ago, the Heritage Day Committee chose for its t-shirt slogan the phrase, “You are Easton’s heritage.”

It is my favorite slogan for Heritage Day, and my favorite t-shirt too. (I even bought a backup one this year, just in case.) The reason I like it is that it is so true.

A place is only as good as its people, and it is the people that make the history of a place. People and their achievements, both large and small, are what put a town on the map. Even if a place is renowned for something else, say its architecture, someone had to put it there. Hence, it is the people that are the impetus that make a place great or important.

Before and during the Revolutionary War, and for a long time after that, a century and a half, in fact, Easton was a place of importance and a center of commerce. Easton’s history of success is much longer than its current history of urban dilemmas.

But dilemmas we do have, and solve them we must.

Looking around on Sunday, I saw a few hundred Eastonians, all of who play their roles in what is Easton’s heritage to come, whether they realize it or not. But seeing the reaction and attentiveness at that reading, I’m not too worried about the future of Easton, not as long as we continue to boo tyrants and unfair taxes.

We, all of us, are Easton’s heritage, and Easton’s future. Let’s make sure we never forget it.