Lost Heritage=Lost Future!

We need to reclaim our heritage


By Walton H. Walker II
Fayetteville

Two score and 10 years ago, I began as a young boy to learn about two of the greatest men in all history, American Presidents George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. I learned and memorized the dates of their birth — Feb. 22 and Feb. 12.

These were two honorable men whose boyhood characters were taught as examples for all young American boys and girls to remember and emulate. Their life stories were learned as part and parcel of the character development of several generations of young Americans. That has all changed now — and not for the better. Our nation is losing its American heritage because we have not been good stewards of it. It’s time for us to reclaim our heritage and rebuild important traditions like these.

Back then, since I lived in Alexandria, Va., my parents and teachers took me to visit the magnificent memorials to Washington and Lincoln on The Mall in Washington. They taught me about the honesty of young George. As I remember it, they taught me how George answered his father when asked, “Who cut down the cherry tree?” with “Father, I cannot tell a lie. I cut down the cherry tree.”

They told me the story of young “honest Abe” — one day young Abraham walked several miles to purchase some goods from a merchant. Abe discovered, after he returned home, that the merchant had given him a very small amount of incorrect change. So Abe trudged back that same day that long distance to return the change and then trudged back home again — his conscience clear.

Back then, every year during February, American schools focused on teaching about Washington and Lincoln and their times, about their upright characters and how their faith helped them in their struggles through major hardships. And we learned about their leadership in those times of great national crisis. We learned why George Washington is called “The Father of His Country.” We learned why Abraham Lincoln is considered the savior of the nation. Washington’s birthday was then honored as a national holiday regardless of the day of the week on which it fell.

It is vital to our American nation that we the people cherish and maintain those common characteristics that cement our national identity. America is only a true nation as long as the vast majority of our people identify themselves with a common knowledge, understanding, belief and following of truth; and for Americans to be a true nation, a vast majority should also claim a common heritage, language, culture, morality and vision for what we should be as a nation.

Our American traditions are one way that we maintain those commonalities and sustain our nation. Once lost, a tradition is very hard to rebuild, and that part of our identity which it helped sustain is in danger of dying.

Those contemplating change in tradition are well advised to tread carefully. In 1968, Congress decided, in large part for economic reasons, to change Washington’s birthday holiday to the third Monday in February. During the debate beforehand, one representative, Dan Heflin Kuykendall, R-Tenn., warned, “If we do this, 10 years from now our schoolchildren will not know or care when George Washington was born. They will know that in the middle of February they will have a three-day weekend for some reason. This will come.”

And so it has come. Our American children not only don’t know George Washington’s birthday, they also don’t know what they should know about George Washington and our nation’s birth. Nor do they know what they should know about Abraham Lincoln and how he gave the nation a new birth.

How many of our schoolchildren know who said and why he said, “It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion, that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, 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.”

Do you know? Do your children?

Walton H. Walker II is a consultant for Booz Allen Hamilton Inc., a retired Special Forces officer, a former strategic planner for Army Special Forces, and a former member of the Observer’s Community Advisory Board. He lives in Fayetteville.