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America 250 Reminds Me of 'Lusty' John · Commentary - TJ Meadows

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  Speaker 1: America is approaching two one hundred and fifty years old,
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  Speaker 1: a quarter of a millennium, still young compared to most nations,
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  Speaker 1: still engaged in that great and sometimes noisy experiment in
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  Speaker 1: self governance. And as we celebrate Americans will rightly remember Washington, Adams, Jefferson,
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  Speaker 1: and that rebellious gang of Founders, men despised by King
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  Speaker 1: George the Third and probably somewhere near the top of
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  Speaker 1: his hanging list. Yet what a legacy, what a nation
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  Speaker 1: they built, Romantic, patriotic, imperfect, enduring. But while we celebrate
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  Speaker 1: the giant's history remembers easily, it may also be worth
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  Speaker 1: pausing for one history nearly forgot. His name was John Howland.
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  Speaker 1: Not a general, not a president, not a revolutionary, just
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  Speaker 1: a young man aboard the Mayflower. Howland wasn't even traveling
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  Speaker 1: as a prominent figure. He boarded the ship as an
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  Speaker 1: indentured servant to John Carver, the future governor of Plymouth Colony.
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  Speaker 1: Howland ended up there isn't entirely clear. History leaves us
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  Speaker 1: only fragments, but sometimes fragments become foundations. William Bradford, writing
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  Speaker 1: in of Plymouth Plantation, recorded what happened next a violent
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  Speaker 1: storm struck the Mayflower somewhere in the northern Atlantic. Bradford
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  Speaker 1: wrote that a quote lusty young man, meaning strong and
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  Speaker 1: energetic in the language of that era, Howland was thrown
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  Speaker 1: overboard into the sea. Imagine it for a moment, blackwater,
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  Speaker 1: raging wind, a wooden ship groaning against the sea, and
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  Speaker 1: one man disappearing into the storm. But Howland caught hold
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  Speaker 1: of a rope trailing from the ship. Somehow he held
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  Speaker 1: on long enough to be pulled back aboard. Bradford wrote
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  Speaker 1: that it pleased God he survived. Nothing else made sense,
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  Speaker 1: and Bradford understandably had no way of knowing what survival
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  Speaker 1: would mean for Howland, what God's plan would bring in
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  Speaker 1: Densher worked off. John Howland would turn pillar of the
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  Speaker 1: colony and Mary miss Elizabeth Tilley. Together they had ten children,
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  Speaker 1: then eighty eight grandchildren. Today historians estimate more than two
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  Speaker 1: million Americans to send from that couple. Two million. Had
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  Speaker 1: Howland slipped beneath those waves, there may never have been
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  Speaker 1: a Humphrey Bogart to look across a piano in Casablanca
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  Speaker 1: and say, here's looking at you, kid. No Chevy Chase
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  Speaker 1: delivering the first weekend update on Saturday Night Live. No
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  Speaker 1: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, no Ralph Waldo Emerson, perhaps no Theodore Roosevelt,
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  Speaker 1: no Franklin Roosevelt, no Bush Presidents, artists, physicians, jurists, historians,
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  Speaker 1: musicians like Mary Chapin Carpenter, actors like William H. Macy
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  Speaker 1: and Alec Baldwin. All ripples from one man who almost
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  Speaker 1: vanished into the Atlantic, And that may be the main point.
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  Speaker 1: History often celebrates the obvious figures, the presidents, the generals,
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  Speaker 1: the revolutionaries, whose portraits hanging in marble. But nations are
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  Speaker 1: also shaped by relatively unknown people whose names rarely make headlines.
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  Speaker 1: A servant on a ship, a parent, a neighbor, a teacher,
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  Speaker 1: a work or people creating ripples. They will never live
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  Speaker 1: long enough to fully see. So as America approaches two
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  Speaker 1: hundred and fifty years, perhaps John Howland offers a reminder.
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  Speaker 1: Providence sometimes disguises itself as coincidence, and every life touches
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  Speaker 1: another in ways impossible to measure in the moment. No
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  Speaker 1: doubt that's part of the American story too, not simply
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  Speaker 1: that great men built a nation, but that ordinary people
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  Speaker 1: connected across generations made it. What it is, and who knows.
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  Speaker 1: You may be one of John Howland's ripples, yourself unique, consequential,
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  Speaker 1: and perhaps far more connected to one another than we
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  Speaker 1: sometimes believe.