This commentary is by Rich LaMonica, a retired U.S. Army veteran, leadership advocate and founder of the podcast The MisFitNation.
America turns 250 this Fourth of July. Across Vermont, families will unfold lawn chairs along parade routes. Community bands will tune their instruments on village greens. Volunteer firefighters, veterans groups and civic organizations will make their way down Main Streets. Children will chase candy tossed from floats while neighbors who may not have seen each other since mud season catch up.
As we approach the country’s 250th anniversary, I find myself thinking back to another milestone: the bicentennial of 1976.
Many Americans remember the bicentennial as a moment of national unity. The reality was more complicated. The nation was emerging from Vietnam and Watergate. Trust in government had been shaken. Inflation was straining family budgets. Many people wondered if the country’s best days were behind it.
Yet when the Fourth of July arrived, Americans showed up.
Vermont had special reason to celebrate. Unlike the original 13 Colonies, the state spent 14 years as an independent republic before joining the Union in 1791. The victory in the Battle of Bennington helped alter the course of the Revolutionary War, and the Green Mountain Boys became part of the nation’s founding legend. Long before Vermont became a state, it had already become part of the American story.
On clear days, the Bennington Battle Monument rises above the landscape as a reminder that the American story was not written only in Philadelphia or Boston. Some of it was written in fields and villages by ordinary citizens from Vermont who believed the future was theirs to shape.
In 1976, I was 5 years old, growing up in New Jersey. My father and uncle loaded a car full of children, and we headed to New York Harbor to see the tall ships that had become the symbol of America’s bicentennial.
I remember the crowds, the excitement and my first glimpse of the magnificent ships gathered from around the world.
And then I got separated from my family. Somehow, I slipped through a gate just before the police closed it behind me. One moment, I was with everyone else. The next, I was alone. To my 5-year-old mind, there was no problem. The ships were ahead of me, so I kept walking. For the adults, however, it was chaos and panic.
Eventually, everything worked out. By evening, we were together again, sitting among thousands of Americans at Liberty State Park, sharing food and watching fireworks burst above New York Harbor.
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Looking back now, decades later, I think we sometimes misunderstand what made the bicentennial special. It wasn’t that Americans agreed with one another. They didn’t. What made it memorable was that millions of Americans participated in something together. The tall ships didn’t belong to one political party. The fireworks weren’t reserved for people who shared the same opinions.
For a brief moment, Americans gathered as neighbors.
As we celebrate the nation’s 250th birthday, that may be the lesson worth recovering. Not the nostalgia — the participation.
Vermont understands that instinctively. For all the changes that have swept across the state over the past 250 years, the state remains a place where civic life is visible. Town Meeting Day, volunteer organizations, local historical societies and community celebrations continue traditions that connect generations.
The country’s story has always been complicated. Progress has often come slowly and unevenly. Every generation has wrestled with questions about who we are and where we are headed. Vermont’s history, like America’s, is best understood not as a finished achievement but as a continuing effort to bring our ideals closer to reality.
That truth is easy to see in Vermont on the Fourth of July. The smell of charcoal grills drifts across village greens. Families spread blankets on school fields and town commons, waiting for the first fireworks to appear against the summer sky.
For a few hours, people set aside their routines and gather simply because they share a community and a country.
This Fourth of July, fireworks will once again light the skies over Vermont. There will be speeches. There will be arguments. There will be celebrations.
When I think about the bicentennial, I don’t remember the debates of 1976. I remember the ships. I remember the fireworks. Most of all, I remember finding my family in the crowd.
America’s 250th birthday offers an opportunity to do what Americans did in 1976: not to agree on everything, but to remember that we belong to the same story. Patriotism is not pretending that everything is perfect. It is recognizing that despite our differences, we are still stewards of the same remarkable experiment in self-government.
When the fireworks begin this year, look up and remember that the story is still being written.
