This Connection” blog is going to be longer than usual. It’s the first part of today’s podcast. But I needed to get you to think about it after watching the fireworks last night . Once upon a time a long time ago, a bunch of guys in powdered wigs and funny hats carrying flintlocks got it right all those years ago. Some of them didn’t like each other very much, but they understood the value of E Pluribus Unum. Roughly translated that means “Teamwork.” We’re yelling at each other a lot these days, but I’m glad to see that we still take time out from screaming to enjoy our fireworks, hot dogs, baseball and beer together. I got a lesson about that a while ago at a baseball game. It was a shot in the gut that made me feel so good, so proud that I wrote about it in my book Staying Happy Healthy And Hot. It happened at a New York Mets game when the PA announcer asked everyone to “stand and honor America, as eight year- old Grace [somebody] sings our national anthem.” I don’t remember her last name. I wish I did. Because she was amazing. She walked out behind home plate and stood in front of the thousands of us waiting to see the game in all of her four-foot-something, maybe ninety-pounds worth of little-girl splendor. She was probably the only person in the stadium wearing a dress. Pink, I think, with a little yellow bow on top. Lady Wonder Wench and I stood up, put our hot dogs and beers on our seats, and put our hands over our hearts. Little Grace was amazing. She took a deep breath and started to sing. “Oh say can you see, by the dawn’s early light …” It was a little girl’s voice but it had a hint of a suggestion in it that in a few years she might sound a bit like the late, great Whitney Houston… but not yet. “What so proudly we hail, at the twilight’s last gleaming …” I started thinking about how proud my Lady and I are of our two little girls, grown-up women now, with their own kids. “Whose broad stripes and bright stars, through the perilous fight, o’er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming …” The old guy in the row in front of me had one arm around his wife, and his other hand was holding a very ancient baseball cap over his heart. The cap said, “Army.” It was probably circa Korea or maybe even W.W. 2. He stood as straight and tall and proud as my dad used to stand. “And the rockets’ red glare, the bombs bursting in air…” The old guy and his wife began singing.. along with little Grace, very quietly and a little off-key, but singing. And Lady Wonder Wench started singing along with them. Singing and crying. Softly. I knew she was thinking about her brother Bob. His simple white cross stands in the sand behind Otis Air Force Base on Cape Cod. “Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there …” More and more of the people around us started singing, very quietly and a little off-key, but singing… together. “Oh, say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave …” All of us were singing now. Very quietly and still a little off-key. but singing. All of us. Together. All around the field. “O’er the land of the free …” Even I was singing. Quietly. Off-key, I guess. But singing—and thinking about my uncle Joe, the World War 2 B-17 navigator, and my brother Geoff, who did a second US Army tour in Vietnam because he knew the experience he got the first time around would save a couple of buddies. He was right. It cost him a chunk of his leg, but he never talks about his Purple Heart or his Bronze Star. “…And the home of the brave.” We all sang it together, quietly and a little off-key: that Amazing little Grace, the old guy and his wife, my Lady Wonder Wench, me with my shirt that says Brooklyn across the front, and thousands of other people who just came to enjoy a baseball game together. It wasn’t a huge majestic sound. It was really kind of quiet and a little off-key. But it was all of us together. I don’t think any of us expected that. There was an almost embarrassed moment of stunned silence. Then someone in the bleachers cut loose with one of those long, loud, two-fingers-between-the-teeth whistles, and the place exploded with applause and laughs, more than a few tears, and so much pride—so much pride we all felt at that moment. And we all felt it together. We all forgot about yelling at each other for a while. It was an E Pluribus Unum moment: out of many, one. Teamwork. E Pluribus Unum is more than just a slogan on our money. It’s what makes us unique. It’s what makes us so powerful. No nation has ever done what we do on the scale that we’re doing it. No country anywhere near our size, with our power, our wealth, our thrust, has ever been governed by its own people. America is an amazing experiment in how such a fiercely independent people can govern ourselves. We yell at each other a lot, but we know that keeping our priceless independence in a sometimes nasty world…depends…on our teamwork. It’s sometimes hard to know when we have to stop yelling at each other for the sake of the team. But we know that only teamwork will keep us strong enough…to yell at each other as long and loud as we like, and no one can tell us we have to shut up.
This is the beginning of today’s podcast. There’s more at www.dicksummer.com/podcast
What a wonderful piece of literature!!!! You brought a proud salty old Postmaster to tears….a definite E Pluribus Unum moment!
Thank you, Dick 🙂