. . . So the next time a co-worker questions your value as a citizen because you come from liberal Cambridge . . . stand up straight, look the speaker in the eye and say proudly, "I'm from Cambridge. I know what it means to be a Patriot."

Speeches & Letters

Patriots' Day

Good morning my fellow Cantabridgeans, my fellow Americans and, above all, my fellow Patriots. I'm Craig Kelley and I'd like to thank all of you for finding the time today, with so much else going on all around us, to honor our Patriots from years gone by. I'd like to thank Bob for his kind introduction and, above all, I'd like to thank the men and women who, 230-plus years ago, made today's Patriots' Day celebration possible.

I am both honored and humbled to have been chosen to address you this morning. I am honored because, in a city whose past includes such notables as Richard Henry Dana and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and whose present includes Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer and former Labor Secretary Robert Reich, I, a lowly ex-Marine Corps Captain and a current freshman City Councilor, was chosen to speak. I am humbled because I speak, figuratively and literally, in the shadows of our heroes from over two centuries ago, the mostly unsung men and women without whose valiant efforts the first flash of American liberty might very well have been crushed in the pan.

As much as any community in America, and more than most, Cambridge has earned the right not just to celebrate Patriots' Day, but to truly venerate it. All Americans share the summer joys of the 4th of July. Thanksgiving is a national day of feasting, repose and, for many, football. Labor Day marks summer's end for people from California to New Jersey. And New Year's Eve starts a new year no matter where you live in our great country.

But Patriots' Day, Patriots' Day. That's our day in a way that no one else can claim. On this very ground, 231 years ago this Wednesday, the quiet spring air was shattered by shouts and musket fire. The earth under our feet was stained red with blood. Bullets flew across the landscape and lodged in our trees and buildings, including Christ Church, behind me.

On this ground, and on similar, hallowed ground from here West to Concord and East to Charlestown, men, regular citizens just like you and me, stood firm and went toe to toe with the armed might of what was, at the time, the strongest superpower the world had ever known. These farmers and merchants, slaves and freemen, bankers and blacksmiths all answered liberty's call from Newton and Acton and Littleton, even from as far away as Connecticut and Rhode Island. They, for the most part, were not trained soldiers, but still they heard the call, left their fields and families, picked up their muskets and walked, I need to emphasize that, walked, to join the battle.

As important as the men were who came to fight, the women they left behind, while less celebrated, were just as important. In a world where, for many, many families, you ate what you grew and, if you didn't grow enough, you went hungry, imagine how the women felt as they watched their husbands leave their fields at the height of planting season, knowing that if the men didn't return in time to get the crops planted, the fall's harvest would be small and the winter a bleak, hungry nightmare. Yet they helped their men prepare for battle, gathered their families around to say farewell and watched their husbands march off into the dark, misty, dangerous world, not knowing when or even if, they would see each other again. Yet these women let their menfolk go off to war, understanding and accepting the additional burden that would now be on their own strong shoulders, the all-important burden of keeping their families fed, clothed and housed in the days, months and years to come.

For those of you who, like I, go west on Route 2, you might remember Isaac Davis Highway, as Route 2 beyond the Concord rotary is called. For most of the world, if they see the name at all, it brings forth no connection with an actual human being. Like the 50,000-plus names carved into the granite face of the Vietnam War memorial and the hundreds of thousands of names carved into walls and monuments from our own War Memorial and Harvard's Memorial Hall to countless stones and monuments in big cities and small towns all across America, the name Isaac Davis is just that, a name. But, like all those other names on all those other stones, he was a son, a father, a husband. 231 years ago, he left his wife, Hannah and his four young, sick children to lead his company of Acton Minutemen on their march to Concord, where he would shortly lie dead, at 30 years of age, at the foot of the North Bridge. One of the first heroes of the American Revolution, Isaac Davis' memory lives on in grandeur. His widow, Hannah, married and widowed twice more, was subjected to a life of such impoverishment that she had to seek a federal pension in her old age. Hannah died in 1841 and has remained over the years an unknown figure to almost all of us. Thus we see that the price of patriotism may also be steep for those who are left behind while the warriors go off to war.

And speaking of names on stones, right over there, a few hundred feet from where we stand, are two monuments to other heroes of the Revolution, General Casimir Pulaksi and General Thaddeus Kosciuszko, Polish warriors who came to America to fight, and in the case of General Pulaksi, to make the ultimate sacrifice, for liberty. I mention these generals to show that patriotism is not, and never has been, the sole province of the native born. Cynics say that patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel, and at times today I admit that it seems like people wave the flag to distract the rest of us from troubling policy issues. Yet I believe that General Pulaksi and General Koscivszko would stand with me when I say, and say proudly from the heart of the People's Republic, "I am a Patriot, the American flag is my flag and I refuse to yield these concepts to those of another political persuasion." I also mention Generals Pulaksi and Koscivszko because today marks the last year that the Polish-American community will honor these men by laying a wreath at their memorials. As with Isaac Davis, the personal link to these two specific names on these two specific stones will fray and break over time and, at some point, the names themselves will have ceased to have a specific meaning for all but the history buffs among us.

But the theme behind those two names on those two stones, the ideas that led Isaac Davis to his death on 19 April, 1775, the events that resulted in the deaths of John Hicks, Moses Richardson, Isaac Gardner and William Marcy at the corner of Massachusetts and Rindge Avenues just one and a half miles north of here, the cause that brought hundreds of militiamen to a field 200 yards to our east where they encamped before the battle of Bunker Hill, the beliefs that helped fill the burial ground behind me and lured General George Washington from his comfortable Virginia plantation to take command of the Continental Army on this very Common, the passion that drove General Knox to drag cannon from Fort Ticonderoga all the way across Massachusetts in the dead of winter, to deliver them, here in Cambridge, to Washington who then used those cannon to drive the British from Boston, from New England and, eventually, from all Thirteen Colonies, the overarching issue that drove all of those actions was the idea that the time had come for America to be free from the long arm of an unrepresentative government.

And that, fellow Cantabridgians, is my point today. The Common on which you now stand, the sidewalks over which you take your children to school, the streets on which you drive to work, the various places where you live your daily lives, are as hallowed as any spot in America. For when you look beyond the asphalt and the cement and the bricks that have been laid down over the past 230 years, when you see back to our glorious past, you can see the people, the Patriots, who sanctified this ground with their sweat, with their tears, and, for many, with their blood. For it was here, and in Concord, and in Lexington, and in Arlington and in many other local towns and villages, that our forefathers and foremothers stood strong for what they believed in. The sacrifices of those who came before us, the deaths and hardships endured by so many so long ago on and near this very spot, fueled the American Revolution and set the foundation for what was to become the United States of America. To summarize it in four words:

"It all started here."

So the next time a co-worker questions your value as a citizen because you come from liberal Cambridge, the next time a distant relative derides you for coming from a City that truly considers all men, and all women, to have been created equal, the next time someone at a party doubts your loyalty to our Country because you live in a "Left Coast" City, stand up straight, look the speaker in the eye and say proudly,

"I'm from Cambridge. I know what it means to be a Patriot."

Thank you, God Bless you, and have a great Patriots' Day.