Two days from the 250th anniversary of our American Declaration of Independence from the monarchy of Great Britain, I am reminded that the leadership of our Founding Fathers and their Constitutional Convention tried something new and experimental. That’s what they called it: a grand experiment, not just another government typical of the times, moving generally among several nations of western civilization. Experiment because it was not ordinary, typical, or guaranteed to work.
I am proud in these days of celebration because my ancestry is American. My father’s ancestry first came to these shores l0png ago before America was America. His name was John, a Scot whose own ancestry was from France in the 11th century. He was an enterprising man who wanted to build an iron foundry. He arrived in Boston in 1625, only five years after the landing of the Mayflower, so Boston, then, was a village. He went north to what is now Maine, and built and ran his foundry, achieving his American dream. I am richly blessed to be one of his descendants, achieving my own American dream.