Posted by
Jim Hunt on Tuesday, November 11, 2008 7:27:36 PM
I am starting this blog on Veterans' Day 2008. A day to remember and reflect upon the gift of freedom that we have been given and to give thanks to and for all of those who made our freedom possible. This morning I sent the following to my friends and family who are serving or have served in the military:
"On this Veterans’ Day please accept my thanks for your service to your country and to all of us. Hopefully our country will never forget the principles that you each took time from your lives to protect. Your sacrifices helped to keep us free just as those of your predecessors helped to make us free. Also thanks to the loved ones who stayed behind while fathers, mothers, husbands, wives, sons and daughters went off to serve and particularly those whose loved ones never came home. Whether in war or peace, you, the men and women who serve in our armed services, honor us with your dedication to American freedom and human liberty. May God bless all who have and are serving and may those serving in harm’s way today or in the future come home safely and in Victory."
Since I wrote this, I have been thinking about everyone who over the years have sacrificed for our freedom. My thoughts strayed to my own family and particularly to my Great, Great, Great, Great Grandfather: Captain Isaac Davis of the Acton [Massachusetts] Minutemen. The following was written by my grandmother, Marie Davis Hunt for the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Lexington and Concord in 1975:
Summoned by the three musket shot signal that ringed the village and countryside, the Minutemen hastened to the home of their young Captain, a skilled gunsmith who had made his own gun and equipped his company with bayonets. [The only Minuteman Company so equipped that day.]
After saying farewell to his wife Hannah, shown standing in the doorway, Captain Davis turned and said, "take good care of the children Hannah."
Then, at the head of his company, Captain Davis gave the order to march. In that early spring dawn, to the tune of fife and drum playing the "White Cockade" they marched the more than six miles over the old roads to the agreed upon rendezvous at the Muster Field in Concord.
There, after a conference of Officers, Captain Davis was heard to say "I haven't a man afraid to go," He then wheeled his men to the right of the column and with Major Buttrick of Concord and Colonel Robinson of Westford led his men to meet the attack at the Bridge.
He was shot through the heart by the first British volley on the spot where the Minuteman Statue now stands. Another of the company, Abner Hosmer, was killed by that same volley.
Captain Davis, the first commissioned officer to be killed in the War of Independence, became the symbolic model for the Statue, chosen by Daniel Chester French as best typifying the spirit he wished to portray.
I am starting this blog to honor Captain Davis and all of those who sacrificed to give us our great country. Today our country faces threats and challenges that Isaac Davis could not have conceived but would still recognize. These are not only threats to our lives, but to our very freedoms. This blog will discuss those threats and what I believe can be done to address them. I don't claim to have all the answers, but I want to make sure the questions get asked so that together we can find the answers.
God Bless you and God Bless America.
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