Atlantic City Weekly

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Location: Atlantic City Fireworks Show
Dateline: 7.4.2011

ATLANTIC CITY — We can change the world. It’s what we do best.

All week long I couldn't decide what to write for this column, and then it hit me as I put ketchup on my July 4 holiday burger. We need to remember how good we still have it here. Sometimes we need to see it through another's eyes. Last night, July 4, I saw America for the fist time all over again.

“Today is our 235th birthday. I bet 200 million people are doing this right now, having a barbeque, eating hamburgers and hot dogs in their back yard. We are about freedom and liberty. Today, we celebrate this by doing absolutely nothing at all, and everything all at once. This is what America is all about — the ability to do what we want, when we want.”
 
American-born Rich Murowski and Rob Shipley were sharing burgers and stories with Ruslan and Ivan, 20-year-old Bulgarians in Atlantic City for the summer.

They are from Varna, the largest city on the Bulgarian Black Sea coast, a resort like Atlantic City. Ruslan is from an educated family. His father is a physician. His architect grandfather, Lambo Kapitanchev, designed the town's train station, a large and beautiful old-world edifice still being used daily. The pair here for the summer are working for $8 an hour, the makings of a fortune in Bulgaria.

Last night they celebrated their first Independence Day, like a lot of foreign-born residents and visitors in Atlantic City did.

As the fireworks started I stood and sang "The Star Spangled Banner" with Jose Rivera Sinclair, a naturalized citizen from Honduras. When Francis Scott Key wrote the words to the song he did not know the large footprint he was leaving for future generations. And as we celebrated the 4th again, it made me think of how large a footprint we need to leave for future generations.
 
The exploding sky caused children born in Pakistan next to us to jump up and down and scream in delight with their brothers and sisters born here in the U.S.A. I sensed the very thing that separates us from the rest of the world: freedom. Without the new immigrant, there is no old immigrant.

Together we shine our beacon of light around the world.
 
Somehow, in the last 20-30 years America has stumbled. We dislodged our soul. Today, we face new battles. Our world seems tossed about; our economy needs a jumpstart. Yet, these newer arrivals clearly reminded me: We, the people, are all we think we are. We just have to truly believe it again. We have to start making things, and inventing things, and creating things. Chief among things we must create is opportunity.

This new war challenges us to recreate ourselves. We need to remember some lessons from the past. We need to remember how to think big and dream bigger.

We need to remember the little guy — the everyday man and woman. We must adopt a "we can do anything" attitude again. Americans from around the world built the U.S.A. the first time; we can build her again.