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Shortly after my fourth birthday in August, 1959, my family moved from Arlington, Virginia, to a neighborhood called Stratford Landing. Stratford Landing is located in pFairfax County, Virginia, on a tributary of the Potomac River known as Little Hunting Creek. Across this marshy tidal creek, and within a mile of my house, was the front gate to State Mount Vernon, the home of President George Washington. The majesty of the entrance, the long walk from there down the pea gravel drive, and the visual impact of the house made an indelible impression on me as a child. By the time I was eight, I could give a better tour of the mansion than many of the docents.

Our house lay within the boundary of Washington's River Farm. Muddy Hole Farm, where the slaves were allowed to have small tracks, was just up Little Hunting Creek from there. They were both on the map Washington drew of his holdings around Mount Vernon -documented proof that I lived on historic ground.

Little Hunting Creek, that marshy, tidal tributary, was a place of mystery and wonder. My friends and I spent hours canoeing its reaches. Depending on the tide, which ran to three feet, the water alternately hid and displayed its treasures. The wooded shoreline on my side of the creek was littered with broken brick from an old kiln that operated there. Scattered around were wooden barges, long sunk and abandoned. A bridge had once spanned the Little Hunting Creek. The wooden bridge piers and the long iron spikes that held them together would appear at low tide for our inspection. The road at either end of the bridge had been completely erased by time from view. It was a bridge that lead from nowhere to nowhere.

Approximately twenty miles from Mount Vernon, down the George Washington Parkway was the Custis-Lee Mansion, also known as Arlington House. The home of Washington's step-great-granddaughter, Mary Custis and her husband Robert Edward Lee, stood as a marble sentinel to the Memorial Bridge connecting the District of Columbia to Virginia. The house and its grounds were confiscated by the Federal government during the Civil War. Now it is protected by ranks of small, grayish white tomb stones of the nation's war dead.

Near the house is the Iwo Jima Memorial. The statue is on a scale of the moment depicted. The six men raising the American flag on Mount Suribachi during World War II is one of the most enduring images in American history. The house and grounds, and the statue were for me testimony to the famous and the common that served and sacrificed.

Crossing Memorial Bridge into Washington, D. C. one was immediately awash with the nation's story. Monuments to presidents and statesmen, warriors and peacemakers were ever present. Then there was the Smithsonian Institute, the repository of the nation's artifacts. One can not imagine the size and grandeur of the Star Spangled Banner until it was seen, first hand, hanging in the Smithsonian.

And there was so much more: Gunston Hall, Woodmont Plantation, George Washington's Grist Mill, the cobble stone streets of old Alexandria. My family picnicked at Bull Run just like the naive crowds that came to witness the first full scale battle of the Civil War. My scout troop hiked through the fog up the sunken road at Antietam and over the ground of Pickett's Charge atGettysburg. We hiked the 180 mile marvel of the C & O Canal from Harpers Ferry, West Virginia to Washington, D.C. History was in every thing you saw and in the air you breathed. .

I study history because I have no choice. It has been a tangible presence all of my life. Growing up as I did, I was immersed in the majesty, mystery, testimony of history. Was I an unquestioning consumer of myth as well as fact? Yes. Did I fall in love with the romantic view of historical figures? Undoubtedly. Do I regret it? Certainly not. The ideals I learned were what was important. The fact that the heroes of my youth were only human after all makes their accomplishments all the more impressive.

So what is history and what is its role in American culture? History is in its simplest form a story, a narrative. It is the chronology of people, places, and events. At a deeper more sophisticated level history attempts to interpret why individuals did what they did. It tries to understand the reason events occurred and why they turned out as they did. Many historians will say that history is the pursuit of truth. Unfortunately, one person's truth may be another person's lie. Did the American President Truman or the Soviet leader Stalin start the Cold War? Truman and Stalin each found reasons for mistrust from their personal experiences and their views of recent events. The motives for action and reaction, stimulus and response may ultimately be unknowable. Does this make the study of the past a meaningless task? I think not. By looking back, we may come to understand that events can (and will be) interpreted differently by different people.

The role of history in American culture is to tell the story of a people. It is to tell the story of the development of the phenomenon of the “American.” The struggle for freedom is the common force that pulls Americans together and pushes us apart. The idea of freedom and the supremacy of the individual is the theme of the American story. The telling and retelling of the story lays out our common experience. It gives us a context from which we can understand where we have been and where we may be heading. The principles that led the colonist to revolt against England were the same principles that lead to the Women's Suffrage Movement and the Civil Rights Movement. The understanding of American history is to understand the direct connection of these events.

History's role is to help transmit ideas from one generation to the next. It tells the events that formed individuals-powerful and ordinary, rich and poor, free or slave-that created the American persona. Daniel Boorstin the Lost World o f Thomas Jefferson, looks at the experience of the English colonist to explain the transformation from the "European" mind and a distinctly "American" mind. He says that the experience of the hardships of establishing a new life and society out of the North American wilderness forever changed the way the colonist and future generations of Americans thought. Boorstin states that European philosophy and science was much more reflective and abstract than their American counterparts. American philosophy tended to be more pragmatic and with direct application. It focused more on action. It was the difference in a people in survival mode and people in relative comfort and stability.

If the study of history is to be successful in this quest, it must be based in sound methodology. Historiography lays out the principles and methodology by which historical research is governed. If the approach to analyzing past events and their aftermath is flawed, then the interpretation and applicability of the information will be also.

Why do I care about history? History is important. By delving into the past, we are given clues to human potential. We can see the heights the human spirit can obtain. We can also see the depths to which it can sink. It gives us a sense of who we are as, a people, and it explains who we are. It can be an invitation to those who may wish to join us.