It’s a different and vivid Fourth of July this year

Lou Marzeles
Editor and Publisher

     It’s another Fourth of July.
     Of all the national holidays, this one to many people seems the most trite, if such a thing is possible, and the most predictable. You hear a lot of platitudinous harkening to patriotism, lots of intermittently funny humor related to picnicking (exemplified by our editorial cartoon today), a customary range of observance activities that almost always involve things that blow up and/or make colors, and commonly entertainment events of broad variety. It’s the comfortable barbecue cookout of national holidays, with a good cause behind it.
     This Fourth is a difficult one for families in the area with members in the armed services. For the second time this year, a Goldendale native has fallen in service to his country. One was a long-time career soldier serving abroad. The most recent was a young man, only 20 years old and only in the Army about a year and half, who reports indicate was caught in a Humvee rollover accident in a training exercise at Fort Riley, Kansas, last Wednesday.
     For these families, their friends, their community, all who cherish the service provided by these extraordinary people, there is nothing whatsoever trite about this Fourth of July. This is not another off-the-shelf cultural cliché. Nor, of course, is it for so many Americans for whom the Fourth is a profound occasion, who recall the amazing circumstances leading up to the signing of the Declaration of Independence, marking the first time a colony had ever severed relations with its parent country; who recall that Lee was forced to leave Gettysburg on July 4,1863, after the epochal three-day battle there; who remember the quality of statesmanship and heroism demonstrated by so many American men and women of remarkable statute throughout the 234-year history of this country. The meaning and glory of these recollections comes vividly home to Goldendale, now, in pained and hallowed contemplation.