"FOURTH OF JULY" 2016

As we spend our July 4th celebration. On YouTube there was an assistant principal from Florida who sang the Star Spangled Banner inside the Lincoln Memorial. It was not planned or staged. It has received over 15 million views.

All of us have many times have listened to famous people, bands, choir's sing this song.

Have you ever read all the words and thought exactly what Francis Scott Key was thinking as he watched the defense of Fort M'Henery.

Forget the music for a second and concentrate on the words.



O! say can you see, by the dawn's early light,

What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming,

Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight,

O'er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming?

And the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air,

Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there;

O! say does that star-spangled banner yet wave

O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?


On the shore dimly seen through the mists of the deep,

Where the foe's haughty host in dread silence reposes,

What is that which the breeze, O'er the towering steep,

As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses?

Now it catches the gleam of the morning's first beam,

In full glory reflected now shines in the stream: 'Tis the star-spangled banner , O! long may it wave

O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave,


And where is that band who so vauntingly swore

That this havoc of war and the battle's confusion,

A home and a country, should leave us no more?

Their blood has washed out their foul footsteps' pollution.

No refuge could save the hireling and slave

From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave:

And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave,

O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave.


O! thus be it ever, when  freeman shall stand

Between their loved homes and the war's desolation

Blest with vict'ry and peace, may the Heav'n rescued land

Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation!

Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,

And this be our motto:

'In God is our trust.'

And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave

O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!


HAPPY FOURTH OF JULY!


Only one President has been born on July 4th

President Calvin Coolidge 1872

Yet...

Three President's have died on July 4th.

John Adams
James Monroe
Thomas Jefferson