Letter To The Editor – What To Be Proud Of

To The Editor:
I was asked to offer the opening prayer at the Hoosick Falls Memorial Day Service on behalf of our Ecumenical Association as well as our Church to all our citizens gathered at the park. What an honor. As many of you already know, my dad and most of my aunts and uncles served in combat during World War II. Friends, relatives and neighbors have served before and after that war. Our family came here and have been proud Americans since 1892. After the opening prayer, I left the gazebo to stand with the people; I am glad I left. I did not want to be associated with what was then spoken. Some talks were good, but I was truly saddened and wondered what to be proud of when there was diatribe fueled by fear, that vented anger and narrow-mindedness… a “yelling” that rivaled an Archie Bunker rant or the tirade from “Inherit the Wind.” So many groups of fellow citizens were condemned; and this included so many standing in the park in front of him (the letter writer is referring here to American Legion Commander Walter Zwinge).
Public civic gatherings have no place for spawning hatred, causing divisiveness or segregating members of our country. This talk did nothing to honor America or the men and women whose lives were taken from them in the horror of war. His “vision” is not my America, nor the America our families came to seeking new life and freedom.
In his first Inaugural speech President Abraham Lincoln stated to all the states… Union as well as Confederate… we are not to be enemies but friends, “though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection.” He fervently appealed to the better angels of our nature. General George Washington, when confronting a possible army take over of the government at the end of our Revolution, tearfully reminded his troops that they fought for a republic of the people and not a military dictatorship. And it all began when the signers of the Declaration of Independence wrote “we pledge our lives and sacred honor.”
We are too noble a people to cover ourselves in negativity. We are too free to hide behind ignorance and hate. We are too open to slam the door shut on those we don’t understand, and we are too American to let evil speech rule the day or be spewed forth in our name to the good people of Hoosick Falls and to all of these United States ever again. May we always remember and never forget the great ideals that we live for and for which so many of us died for.
Fr. Thomas Zelker
Pastor of Immaculate Conception Church, Hoosick Falls
Parish Priest of St. Patrick’s Church, Cambridge
Citizen of the United States of America