Minutes of the April 17, 2004 meeting of
the Tampa Chapter SAR
Vice President Bolen called
the meeting to order at
Members present: Joe Hill,
Jack Bolen, Luke Lloyd, Rodney Stebbins, Scott Stebbins, Randy Stebbins, Alan
Bell, Marty Miller, Jim Washburn, Dan Stutzman,
Welcome guests: June Bolen,
Jeanne Lloyd, six cadets, two JROTC instructors, and seven other guests.
The vice president
introduced the members and guests.
The SAR membership approved
the minutes of the March meeting as published in the newsletter.
The secretary briefly
reported on the status of presenting the JROTC medals to local high schools and
asked for volunteers willing to do so.
The treasurer reported a
current balance of $2,215.03.
Bob Yarnell reported on the
status of our revised Good Citizenship award. Two elementary schools in
On behalf of Dwight Tetrick,
Jack Bolen read the registrar’s report detailing the status of our potential
members.
There being no other
business the meeting recessed for lunch.
Vice President Bolen called
the meeting to order. He presented the SAR JROTC awards to the following
outstanding cadets:
John Szopa,
Michael Wojtylak,
Jason Jimenez,
Justin Ropiza,
Michael J. Hamilton,
He began
with some introductory remarks for the benefit of the guests where in he gave
some background of the SAR and the JROTC award.
Then
the talk turned to an American history quiz that had been distributed as
members and guests were arriving. The quiz was taken from one used to determine
the ‘history IQ’ of students at some of the best universities. According to that study, only 23 percent of seniors at 55 of
American’s elite universities can identify James Madison as the Father of the
Constitution. Over a third cannot identify the Constitution as the founding
document of our government and nearly half do not know in which half-century
our nation fought the Civil War.
What does this mean for us and our
country?
Thomas Jefferson wrote that the
study of history protects the people “as they are the ultimate guardians of
their own liberty. History, by apprising them of the past, will enable them to
judge of the future.”
In other words, if future
generations of Americans are not taught how their liberty came about, they will
take it for granted. If they do not learn of the sacrifices that have preserved
their liberty, they will be complacent in its defense. Knowledge of history is
not an option if a free people are to cherish liberty and defend it with zeal.
It is easy to criticize schools and
legislatures for failing to require and teach American History effectively and
we ought to take every opportunity to push for improvements. But we also need
to look to ourselves. Scripture reminds us to first remove the “log” from our
own eye before offering to remove the speck from our neighbor’s eye.
Listed below are books, speeches,
and historical documents that are used in
So this is the challenge: Let us
each commit, over a period of time, to reading some or all of these works. The
exercise will improve our own knowledge of American History and thus make us
better guardians of our own liberty.
The information provided here was
obtained from “Standing by American History”, a pamphlet published by
A brief discussion followed.
The 50/50 drawing was held
and the treasury thus enriched by $10.00.
Vice President Bolen led the
recessional and Chaplain Washburn benediction. The meeting adjourned at
Respectfully submitted,
Kevin Yarnell
Chapter Secretary