PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE
This month we celebrate the two hundred and forty-eighth anniversary of our country. I believe as our country grows older, it is more important than ever to look back to its founding. We need to remember our past to successfully move forward into the future. The early patriots staked their lives on the words of the Declaration of Independence. There has been a movement among some in our country to villainize some of the men and women who helped form the first democracy in centuries. Their names have been taken off buildings and streets, and their statues have either been destroyed, removed, or covered up. It is a mistake to look through the societal lens of today and make judgments on America two hundred and fifty years ago. The men and women who started the movement for independence were human but committed to the goal of freedom and dignity of their fellow human beings. They sacrificed their livelihood, their reputations, and their health. If the American experiment were unsuccessful, these leaders would have been hanged for treason. There were times during the War of Independence that that almost happened.
Given the nature of mankind, our leaders established a brilliant system of checks and balances within the government. This was to keep the founding principles as an ongoing foundation for our nation. Over the years, we have had our blemishes and we have made our mistakes, but despite this, our country has pushed forward and progressed tremendously. There are opportunities and dreams to be had in this United States. My father was born in Berlin, Germany. At age five, his father was killed in Belgium, fighting for the homeland. After World War I, there was tremendous poverty and hopelessness in Germany. My grandmother remarried a man named Alfred Miericke, and in 1923 the three of them immigrated to the United States. They passed through Ellis Island and passed their physicals for entry. Alfred had a brother in Chicago who sponsored them. My father prospered in his newly adopted country. He learned English, went to Northwestern University, served in the United States Navy and was a successful businessman in Chicago. If he had stayed in Germany, he would have been forced to be part of the German Fascism of World War II. My maternal grandmother was the child of an unwed mother in Sweden. At the age of sixteen she immigrated by herself to work in St. Paul, Minnesota as an indentured servant. She passed through Ellis Island in 1906. Fulfilling her required service, she married and had nine children, all of whom survived and thrived in her new country. My grandparents both came to America for freedom, opportunity, and a better life, and they both found and experienced it.
America continues to be a work in progress. We all need to be part of that work. To keep our country growing on its original foundation, we all must be involved. As a country we are being tested, and our check and balance system is being stretched. It is important that we don’t make judgments and decisions based on emotion, but rather we need to make them based on truth and justice. We always need to research an issue and not jump to conclusions. Despite our differences, we need to lift and encourage our fellow citizens and do our best to respect and unite one another. There are formerly democratic countries in this world that in just a few years lost their way. At least half of the people in this world live under dictatorships, and much of the world population lives in extreme poverty. We live in a beautiful upscale community called Tuscawilla. On this Fourth of July, let us be thankful for our freedom and for those who made it possible. Each one of us must do our part to keep our community, our State, and our country a bastion of freedom and opportunity. Let us minimize all our differences and continue to focus on those principles on which our country was founded.
Dr. Kurt Miericke
THOA President
Publisher, Tuscawilla TodayI
Tuscawilla Homeowners Association
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