My wife and I visited our daughter’s home in an affluent Fresno, California, neighborhood not long ago. We strolled out back, and from the second-story veranda, she and her husband hung a large American flag, visible to everyone on the golf course below. Surprised to see it, I felt tears well up. This sudden outpouring of emotion seemed silly to me. My son-in-law noticed and expressed surprise. Choked up, all I could muster was, “Well, I was born on the Fourth of July, after all.”

My patriotism may have originated with my birthday, but of course it’s so much more than that. Heroism, compassion, and altruism often move me to tears, and the United States of America encompasses all of these qualities. I don’t claim to be a historian, but surely the history of the United States has more than its share of evocative tales. Briefly study any era of America’s short history, and an inspiring story of hope, or courage, or selflessness, or community, will surely emerge.

I was a schoolteacher for 30 years. While teaching American literature to my high school students, I focused on stories that elucidate those themes. In September, I would tell the story of my neighbor David McDonald. His company had an office in New York City that looked out onto the World Trade Center towers. He took the events of 9/11 personally, and a month or so afterward, he chartered an airliner for first responders. “You folks have had a tough few weeks. You need a break. Any first responder that wants to come to California for a few days will be my guest, all expenses paid.” Regardless of where the crowd went in our little agricultural and cattle community of Clovis, California, New Yorkers’ money was not accepted. The following year, the New York Police Department and the New York Fire Department asked Dave to be their grand marshal at the St. Patrick’s Day Parade. Years later, at Dave’s funeral, one of those firefighters came to say goodbye to Dave and said that trip literally saved his life from suicide.

I would also find a chance to tell my students the story of Jerry Parr. There’s an unobtrusive, often overlooked poster in the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library just a few hours south of where I live. It’s for a movie called “Code of the Secret Service” that starred Ronald Reagan. As a child, Jerry Parr saw the movie several times and decided to set his sights on becoming a Secret Service agent. He succeeded. Not only did he become a Secret Service agent, his detail ended up serving none other than Reagan himself who had become president! Amazing, but that’s not all. He was on duty the day of the assassination attempt on Reagan, and it was he who made the decision to go straight to the hospital rather than to the White House, thus saving the president’s life. Who would have thought?

In the spring, I would teach my students that, at a minimum, a cursory knowledge of World War II is essential to understanding our world today. It is certainly the most cataclysmic event of the past hundred years, probably of the past one thousand, and possibly in the history of mankind. Stories of courage, heroism, and self-sacrifice are too numerous to tell. Yet those virtues are the summation of America’s war involvement. “There is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” (John 15:13) All of America struggled for four years, and nearly half a million military members made the ultimate sacrifice to save our neighbors overseas from despotism and hatred.

An overview of World War II was a precursor to teaching John Knowles’ masterpiece novel, “A Separate Peace.” It’s set at a prestigious boys’ school in New Hampshire, where the students would presumably be insulated from the unfolding horrors of the war. But soon, their sports and classical studies are replaced with training exercises preparing them for the battlefield—which had become their destiny. Told in retrospect with beautiful prose, the novel is written from the main character’s perspective, and he comes to realize how much fear saturated those days. He learns that “wars are caused by something ignorant in the human heart.” He is chagrined to learn that that includes his heart, or at least it did, until his best friend purified it with unconditional, sacrificial love. “I was ready for the war, now that I no longer had any hatred to contribute to it.” It’s a marvelous, poignant story of self-discovery, coming of age, and redemption—an American story.

I carry these and so many other epic stories deep within. They comprise my psyche, my soul, and my being. It’s no wonder I find genuine symbols of patriotism so touching. They indicate that others also deeply appreciate our America.

This article was originally published in American Essence magazine.

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