Johnny Appleseed: 3/18/1845

70-years-old, he visited his friend William Worth one evening, ate some milk and bread, read out loud from the Bible, laid down on the floor to sleep and never woke up. This was how John Chapman, better known as Johnny Appleseed, died on MARCH 18, 1845.

Johnny Appleseed's father, Nathaniel, was a Minuteman who fought the British at Concord in 1775. Johnny Appleseed collected seeds from apple cider presses in western Pennsylvania and planted nurseries from the Alleghenies to central Ohio, giving thousands of seedlings to westward bound pioneers. He lived at harmony with Indians, bringing them medicinal plants. During the War of 1812, Johnny Appleseed heard the British had incited an Indian attack, so he ran 30 miles from Mansfield to Mount Vernon, Ohio, to warn settlers.

Bare foot, wearing a mush pan over his eccentric long hair and an old coffee sack over his shoulders, Johnny Appleseed had a unique devotion to nature and the Bible. He called an apple blossom a "living sermon from God" and often quoted the Sermon on the Mount. Poet William Henry Venable wrote: "Remember Johnny Appleseed - All ye who love the apple - He served his kind by word and deed - In God's grand greenwood chapel."

American Minute with Bill Federer

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: 2/27/1807

"Listen my children and you shall hear of the midnight ride of Paul Revere..Hang a lantern aloft in the belfry arch...One if by land, two if by sea..."

These lines are from the poem, Paul Revere's Ride by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, born FEBRUARY 27, 1807. An American poet and Harvard Professor, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote such American classics as: The Song of Hiawatha; The Courtship of Miles Standish and Evangeline, in which he penned: "Man is unjust, but God is just; and finally justice triumphs."

In A Psalm of Life, 1838, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote: "Life is real! Life is earnest! And the grave is not its goal; Dust thou art, to dust returnest, Was not spoken of the soul...In the world's broad field of battle, In the bivouac of Life, Be not like dumb, driven cattle! Be a hero in the strife! Trust no Future, howe'er pleasant! Let the dead Past bury its dead! Act,-act in the living Present! Heart within, and God o'erhead! Lives of great men all remind us, We can make our lives sublime, And, departing, leave behind us, Footprints on the sands of time;-Footprints, that perhaps another, Sailing o'er life's solemn main, A forlorn and shipwrecked brother, Seeing, shall take heart again."

American Minute with Bill Federer

Victor Hugo: 2/26/1802

"God is behind everything, but everything hides God," wrote Victor Hugo in his classic Les Miserables, Book 5, Chapter 4.

Born FEBRUARY 26, 1802, Victor Marie Hugo was hailed as the greatest of the Romanticists poets. He is best know for writing Cromwell, 1827, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, 1831, and Les Miserables, 1862, an epic story of redemption set in Paris during the French Revolution.

Hugo's father was a general in Napoleon's army and Hugo supported his heir, until he turned out to be a tyrant. Hugo opposed him and was forced into exiled for 19 years. Over 3 million people attended Hugo's funeral in Paris.

In his Preface to Cromwell, 1827, Victor Hugo wrote: "Lastly, this threefold poetry flows from three great sources-The Bible, Homer, Shakespeare...The Bible before the Iliad, the Iliad before Shakespeare." Victor Hugo stated: "England has two books, the Bible and Shakespeare. England made Shakespeare, but the Bible made England."

George H.W. Bush stated at the Dedication of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, Dallas, Texas, November 11, 1989: "Victor Hugo said 'Nothing can stop an idea whose time has come.' Well, my fellow veterans, the idea is democracy."

American Minute with Bill Federer

VETERANS--not preachers, reporters, poets, campus organizers, lawyers, or politicians--buy our freedom with their blood

Let us not forget:

It is the VETERAN, not the preacher, who has given us freedom of religion.

It is the VETERAN, not the reporter, who has given us freedom of the press.

It is the VETERAN, not the poet, who has given us freedom of speech.

It is the VETERAN, not the campus organizer, who has given us freedom to assemble, so illegal immigrants can wave their Mexican flags and demand rights they don't even have.

It is the VETERAN, not the lawyer, who has given us the right to a fair trial.

It is the VETERAN, not the politician, who has given us the right to vote.

It is the VETERAN, who salutes the Flag;

It is the VETERAN, who serves under the Flag,

And, it's the VETERAN who is buried under the flag.

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