Comment: Thoughts on Monrovia's Fourth of July Celebration

The Monrovia Fourth of July celebration at Library Park was - as usual - wonderful, but you know, even though the fireworks were great (Thank you, city government and generous contributors!) what really touched my heart was the result of a glitch.

At the beginning of the night the music for the Star Spangled Banner abruptly stopped part way through the music, but then a great thing happened - the crowd picked up the national anthem and sang it themselves!

When I was growing up in the 60s this would not have been worthy of comment because the crowd always sang the national anthem. But I think during the ill feeling of the Vietnam War era a lot of people decided not to sing it, so various venues started bringing in singers to sing it, and it soon became something that was performed for the people rather than something sung by the people.

I would so much love to get back to the people singing the national anthem. To me, singing it as a crowd reinforces the sense that, "Whatever our political differences, we are all in this together."

Maybe we should start doing this intentionally, and it might as well be Monrovia that leads the way. But since I don't think people are used to singing the anthem anymore, maybe it would be good to have a song leader get the crowd started in singing it. But please, don't do it for us. It's not us if you do it for us.

- Brad Haugaard