Proud to Live in the United States

 

By some stroke of luck, I was born in the USA.

 

I might have been an Eskimo child, and when I reached my present age, I would have been taken away from the family circle and put on an ice floe to starve or die, because I would no longer be of value.

 

I might have been born in a country which ordered me to dress in a head-to-toe covering with only a small slit for me to see the outside world.

 

As a woman, in some places I would not be allowed to vote ore drive, or ever appear in public without the presence of a male relative to accompany me.

 

In America, I may travel from Missouri to Nebraska or beyond, without having to show identity papers as I cross the state border.  I may meet my friends at a restaurant, without being arrested for gathering in a group of more than two people.

 

My political views can be written or stated orally without reprisal.  No goon squad will break into my door to arrest me for being a Republican, Democrat, or Independent.

 

The post office does not cut out parts of my letters in a sweeping censorship.

 

I, like many lucky Americans, am not submissive.  We are blessed because people, we never knew or now know, chose to pay the price to maintain our freedom.

 

Mary Mruzik

Pacific, MO

 

[Editors Note:  This was a talk given at the senior’s Center of Pacific, MO in 2010 where she organized assistance and activities over several decades.   Mary Werner-Mruzik joined the Woman’s Army Core that was just being formed in WWII as an Officer where she met her future husband who served as an infantry squad leader in Gen. Patton’s Third Army during the Battle of the Bulge.  Two of her eldest sons served as Army Officers in Vietnam on the Asian mainland.  During the Great Depression, her father lost the family dry goods business in the economic downturn.  She was in all respects a member of the “Greatest Generation” of Americans and managed to survive the turmoil with a grit and grace common to that age. ]