Let’s celebrate, not commemorate

America’s Weekend is over, and I am just surfacing from having volunteered all three days at Historic Jamestowne. My nose is not sunburned anymore and my voice is almost normal again, but the joy and exhilaration of chatting up the tens of thousands of visitors lingers.

Amid the high ranking visitors, the hot dogs, the lectures, the historically-clothed actors, musicians, and Indians, the souvenirs, the dirt flying around a 17^th century weapons cache at the dig, and the plethora of sashed Descendants of Ancient Planters, I had the chance to speak one-on-one with two people who reminded me of the real cause for celebration of our nation’s 400^th anniversary.

The first was a man with a heavy Polish accent, a man whose father had been imprisoned with Lech Walesa during the solidarity movement. He shared his story with me, how it all went down, how he ended up in Chicago. He was at Jamestown to celebrate the first Polish glassworkers who arrived in 1608 and then initiated the first workers’ strike in 1619 winning the same rights that the General Assembly had granted to Englishmen. Catholic-Polish glassworkers at Jamestown, telling the GA what’s what. When I asked him if this wasn’t the greatest country in the world, he beamed and said, “That’s why I’m here.”

The second conversation took place on Sunday, just before closing. A middle-aged, well-dressed woman stopped me by the west bulwark and commented with a tone of awe that the whole weekend had the feeling of a big family reunion, that even though most of us weren't related and probably didn't have family ties to the settlement or England, it was like we were all one family. 

She was right, of course. Jamestown is where The United States of America was born, where representative government, Christianity, blended cultures, and commerce blossomed freely—the four things that still make America unlike any other country that ever existed. America’s Weekend was an American Family reunion. We’re all Americans and it started here. You can move to France, but you’ll never be a Frenchman; you can move to Spain, but you’ll never be a Spaniard. Anyone can move to America and become an American.

So let the celebration of America continue, let everyone rejoice that we are indeed one family, one people. E Pluribus Unum.

And may the joy linger forever.

Karla Kraynak Bruno

Author of Mischiefs and Miseries: a novel of Jamestown 1607

Published May 20, 2007 in The Virginian-Pilot, Norfolk, Virginia