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Editorial: Let’s party
Op-Ed · August 04, 2016
Volunteers, businesses, city staff, civic organizations and more put in a lot of work to prepare for Hoover’s Hometown Days, yet we must remember why we do it.
To celebrate.
This is a party.
We celebrate our history, and how families settled in West Branch, built homes and roads and businesses … and relationships.
We celebrate Herbert Hoover’s example of how a boy, instilled with the values of knowing right and wrong, the worth of a human being, the importance of priorities, the need for honesty to improve oneself and how to use resources can accomplish great things.
We celebrate making it through another year. While many of us said good-bye to family members, old and young, we cherish how they affected us, changed us, and taught us to be better people.
We celebrate children growing up in sports and fine arts and academics and civic responsibility. We celebrate those coming back to visit and remembering from where they came. We celebrate their ongoing potential, and, as long as we’re alive, ours too. From churches hosting Vacation Bible School to the American Legion challenging pupils to consider the importance of the U.S. flag to Main Street West Branch volunteers cleaning up downtown.
We celebrate long-term businesses and new ones that contribute to economic vitality. We celebrate new homes going up, whether they stretch us farther to the west or rebuild on the same plot. West Branch is one of the few cities in the state experiencing growth.
We celebrate our accomplishments. Teams and individuals earned state honors, the Hoover National Historic Site marked 50 years, Downey Baptist Church marked 150 years, Jess Burger earned Iowa Elementary Principal of the Year, Centerdale Women’s Club marked 125 years and West Branch Police added a fourth full-time officer. And the list goes on and on.
And we celebrate freedom. With the presidential race right now, we find ourselves discussing — and, yes, arguing — freedom versus security, frankness versus rudeness, intentions versus actions, what one can do versus what one should do, experience versus new ideas, and how, in the end, we continue to live together as the Great American Melting Pot.
Hoover’s Hometown Days runs from Friday afternoon to late Saturday night. Let’s use that day-and-a-half to, as much as possible, take a break and enjoy the fun, the food, the music, games, entertainment, fireworks, friends, family and neighbors.
Let’s party.
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