Athens Review, Athens, Texas

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February 10, 2010

RICH FLOWERS: February celebrates great presidents

Rich Flowers The Athens Review

Athens — It’s February, and the weather the last few days has been downright shivery. A little wind, a little rain, and a temperature around 40 degrees makes going outside a miserable experience.

Februarys past have brought Siberian blasts that knocked the temperature down into the teens. We’ve even seen snow, some years.

Still, February has its other side. Some days the mercury creeps up to 70 degrees, and the sun brings a promise that spring is just around the corner.

Those days set me to humming John Fogerty’s great song Centerfield, and wishing I was still young enough to grab a glove and start shagging flies.

There are some noteworthy dates on the February calendar. Feb. 2 was groundhog day. That doesn’t mean a lot in east Texas, where we never see a groundhog, but the people in Punxatawnie, Pa. have turned it into a Black-Eyed-Pea style celebration.

We also celebrate the birthday of two presidents in February, probably the two best ones. George Washington was around at the birth of our nation, and Lincoln labored mightily to preserve it during the dark years of the Civil War. We now lop their birthdays together to make President’s Day.

The more I read about Washington, the more impressed I am with the man. He exuded nobility in a land that had no institutionalized nobility. There were some in his day who would have made Washington king, but they had some strong opposition – from Washington himself.

The old saying that absolute power corrupts absolutely, did not apply to our first president.

Lincoln, on the other hand, embodies what our nation is all about. He was born into poverty, but rose to prominence. He was defeated when he tried for public office, then won the biggest prize, the presidency. He freed the slaves, yet cared for the Confederate soldiers and their families. He wanted the post-war years to be a time of peace and healing, but was cut down by an assassin.

He wrote one of the shortest speeches given by an American president, and filled it with phrases that can still stir our hearts and patriotism today.

The Gettysberg address begins by recalling the dreams and vision of the men of Washington’s day.  The nation, he said, was “conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”

When Lincoln was inaugurated, there were many men and women in this country who could not share in that liberty. They were not treated as equals because they were considered the property of someone else. In 1863, Lincoln issued “The Emancipation Proclamation,” setting free those who were held in bondage.

In July, the Union army won, at a great cost, the critical battle at Gettysberg. That November, at a gathering to commemorate a cemetery for those who died there. Lincoln rose to speak. He spoke not of bitterness and retribution, but of the future. He spoke not of the victorious North and the defeated South, but of a union preserved. He vowed “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.”

  Shall I state the obvious, that we need leaders like these two men today? Where are we going to find them? Red Skelton said in his famous recitation of “The Pledge of Allegiance,” that freedom is everybody’s job. Let’s remember that on Feb. 12 and Feb. 22.

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