Thank you, Mrs. Coules

In 1977, I was in the third grade at the now nonexistent Benjamin Rush Elementary School in Los Alamitos, California. My teacher that year was a kindly woman in her early 50's named Mrs. Coules - pronounced "cool-less," though invariably mangled to "coolest" by our eight-year-old tongues.

As well it should. She really was the coolest.

I don't know what the LAUSD required in its scope and sequence for the third grade in the late 70s, but I know what we covered in that class, seemingly every day: the US space program (via twenty-year-old clackety films about the Telstar and Vanguard satellites, which promised in that New Frontier voice of confidence over the hum of the Bell and Howell school series projector that "someday soon, man may set foot on the surface of the moon!") and American History. I know it was right after the national hoopla over the Bicentennial in '76, but I believe Mrs. Coules had another motivation for her focus and direction in class.

She was about the same age as my mom, meaning she was a World War II girl as well. The folks that came through that time (and the Great Depression just preceding), despite their shortcomings in some areas (as all generations, ours included, have), certainly had their sense of patriotism down. Some were rattled, some were shattered by the ambiguities of the Korean and Vietnam conflicts, but many stayed the course - hoisting forth Old Glory at the drop of a hat, lauding the Founding Fathers (no gender-neutral "Founders" for them - I mean, honestly, not to belittle the behind the scenes work that was all that was allowed at the time, but how many women did sign the Declaration of Independence?)

Mrs. Coules came to mind yesterday morning in church. Being the Sunday before Independence Day, the worship leader had chosen a host of patriotic songs for the congregation to sing. Now, normally, we have the big screen projector providing the words for those who may not know the lyrics of a timeless hymn like "A Mighty Fortress is Our God" or a contemporary number like Rich Mullins' worship standard, "Awesome God." The system is run via a PC running Windows XP at the back of the church, and the songs are set up as PowerPoint slides, which works flawlessly Sunday after Sunday.

Except this Sunday.

For whatever reason, the system developed, as Threepio would say of Artoo on the Death Star, a "slight flutter." Bottom line was, we couldn't see any of the lyrics of any of the songs.

But, thanks to Mrs. Coules, and her unswaying devotion to the idea of getting patriotic music into the heads of seventies kids growing up in a cutting-edge, "hippie/commie" influenced school system, I knew the words to every song.

Not just easy ones like "America the Beautiful" - "Oh, beautiful, for spacious skies, for amber waves of grain..." but also the somewhat more obscure (at least to modern ears) "My Country 'Tis of Thee" -"My country, 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing/Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrims' pride/from every mountainside/Let freedom ring!" In the third grade, not a day went by that we didn't sing one of these songs. In fact, if I remember correctly, we sang "My Country 'Tis of Thee" every single day after the flag salute.

I believe it was Mrs. Coules who helped to inspire in me my love of history, especially of my country's history. I am an unabashed patriot - I truly love this nation and what it stands for. Mind you - because it is an enterprise of people, it has not always achieved the lofty goals set forth at its outset - but it is the presence of those goals, and the striving towards them as stated in the Preamble to the Constitution - in order to form a more perfect union - the country isn't perfect, and will never be, but it is the striving for perfection that has made this nation great, coupled with the ability to change, to improve, to seek the better for all mankind under God.

I am a proud American this 229th celebration of American independence. Thank you, Mrs. Coules - you made a difference in this man's life.