On a bookshelf in my cluttered office is a small, hardcover book I was given in third grade. The well-worn book nestled in between My Dick Jane and Sally primers is titled  I Am an American.

This book was brand new when I was assigned it on the first day of school in 1963. The pages were still crisp with firm, uncreased edges, and the spine was still stiff, opening it for the first time.

The book was new, but the ideas were as old as our country.

The mission of the book, as explained by the author Olive Burt was “to start children out from the very first with the knowledge that this country has something different and unique and worth fighting for, something to brag about.”

And once upon a time, and not that long ago, we did brag.

Today I long for that.

In our history books of the early 1960s, America was the shining beacon, the greatest nation, and the embodiment of democracy, freedom, generosity, and technological progress.

America’s great wealth and power required us to provide not merely a moral example but also moral leadership for the rest of the world.

We were racing boldly and confidently into the future.

That fall, my third-grade teacher, Mrs. Patton, a large battle axe of a woman who seemed ancient but was likely younger than I am now, handed out these new books.

Sitting at my antiquated wooden desk,I flipped through the book as  the teacher read out loud to us words that stayed with me long after that class:

“ The book,” she began in her booming Margaret Dumont voice, “explains our country’s creed.”

“Nearly 200 years ago,”  she read, “the great and wise men of our country met and wrote down the things Americans believe. They wanted the whole world to know what this new nation believed about the way people should be governed.”

“They called this the Declaration of Independence. These wise men had ideas that were different from the rest of the world.”

“We hold these truths to be self-evident… that all men are created equal”

“What did it all mean?”

“First of all it means that every person has the same rights as everyone else. No one is born with the right to rule others. No one can say, ‘I am the captain, whether you like it or not!’”

“After those wise men wrote that letter telling the world that they were going to start a new nation, they knew they needed a set of rules to live by.

They called it the Constitution.

When you read the Constitution, you see all the things that were written in to protect me and my right to live as I wish.

We elect our officials

“They do not govern us according to their whims. They simply see that the rules we have made are kept by us all.”

“Americans are proud of what they have built.”

“But nothing means more to them than the freedoms they have won and written into the Constitution”

After she finished reading, Mrs. Patton asked each of us to memorize a passage from the book about what being an American meant for each of us.  In a few weeks, we would each recite it to the class with our parents in attendance.

Painfully shy, I panicked at the thought of speaking in front of a group.

I read through the book and found just the right passage of what being an American meant to me.

For weeks, I practiced with my mother the passage I had chosen, often sitting at the Formica kitchen table while she peeled yellow onions or scraped russet potatoes.

I memorized these words perfectly, repeating them to myself as I brushed my teeth and combed my hair. I found a receptive and approving audience to my recitation with Barbie and Ken, and at the end of the day in my cozy bed before I fell asleep, I whispered them to a captive audience of one, my plush tiger Teddy.

These words, these pictures, these beliefs would be seared into me for the rest of my life.

I Am An American

On a chilly Friday afternoon in early December, dressed in a brand new red plaid woolen jumper, I nervously stood in front of the class. My blonde hair may have been Breck shining clean, but my cheeks burned as red as my jumper as I recited the passage I had chosen.

As I stood before the class and recited the words, the flag hung behind me, next to a glossy black and white photograph of President John F. Kennedy. It had only been two weeks since our young president had been assassinated.

The first cracks in my midcentury American Dream had begun.

Yet I trusted that these important words I memorized about what it meant to be an American were immutable.

Nervously, I looked out at the classroom with its rows of perfectly aligned desks filled with familiar classmates and their less familiar parents seated on our small wooden chairs.

Like the other fathers, my own ex-GI Dad was AWOL, reporting for duty in a grey flannel suit in a faraway office.

But in a sea of beehives and bouffant hair, I saw my mother smiling at me.

Suddenly, my voice was strong because I knew I was speaking about something profound.

What I could not know,  what I did not know, was what the future held.

“I am an American

If you ask me what that means

I’ll answer

These things I must do:

I must speak the truth as I see the truth;

I must play by the rules that are fair.

I must not laugh at another’s ways,

Or take more than is my share.

I must do no thing that will cause me shame.

 

I must walk tall and brave and free,

And I must help others to have

The rights that mean so much to me.

“We the people, we will make sure that we remain free, and that our children and our children’s children are free forever

I am one of those ‘children’s children’ they were thinking about. I am glad they made the rules to last till I came along.

I am going to help keep them for those who come after me.”

There was a hush when I finished, and then all at once the parents clapped loudly. I looked at the smiling audience filled with the greatest generation, all beaming, none more so than my own mother.

For over 80 years, that was the America we knew.

Under Donald Trump, America, my America, has been betrayed.

Cruelty has replaced humanity as the Congress Trump has hijacked, pulled the plug on healthcare and food assistance to millions, both here and abroad.

It marked the end of social compassion and the rise of an era of authoritarian oligarchy.

Where is that America that I pledged allegiance to?

Beginning in kindergarten in 1961, I spent every morning for the next dozen years standing tall next to my school desk with my right hand over my heart, pledging allegiance to a country that promised liberty and justice for all.

We may not have realized our ideals fully, but we always moved to correct them.

My hand grew, as did the country. I watched it change, stumble at times, but grow.

It’s what I expected of America. That was American Exceptionalism to me – our ability to constantly move forward, help those in need, expand our knowledge, and right our wrongs.

 

 

We would always strive to do better.

That America is gone….

I Pledge Allegiance

I learned the Pledge of Allegiance in a suburban classroom filled with second-generation Americans.

They were predominantly of Italian, Eastern European, and Irish descent. All groups that had been discriminated against and unwanted at one time. As a third-generation American with grandparents born in this country, I was an anomaly.

I was proud of that history but never felt more of an American than my classmates, the grandchildren of immigrants who had traveled in crowded ships across the Atlantic, landing in Ellis Island. They left pogroms and crushing poverty with their meager belongings, clutching tightly onto the hope that America promised.

Today, our neighbors hide in fear as masked men roam the streets of our cities and towns like the Gestapo, scooping up immigrant mothers, fathers, and children. Someone’s sister, brother, husband, or wife. Our police state is now fully funded.

My America is gone….

Trump’s Golden Age is not golden for WE the People.

Even as I move forward chronologically, our country is moving backwards as a society.

The social welfare programs put in place as guardrails that I believed would protect me in my old age, are slowly being dismantled.

There will be nothing golden about my golden years.

I am crying for America.

Today I cry for our country, for my parents, my grandparents, and great-grandparents who came to this country filled with promise, all who loved this country, fought for this country, and believed in the possibility of America.

I cry at my father’s grave, inscribed with his favorite saying:  “It’s your America,” a phrase filled with boosterish post-war possibilities of the greatness of our nation, where anything is possible.

No, Daddy,  “it is  not  my America.”

The rights that mean so much to me.

And it brings me to tears.

I am An American.

And for the first time, I am ashamed.

As America celebrates its 250th  anniversary, its mourning in America.

I mourn for our country.

I cry for the millions who will lose the safety nets so primal to being an American. I cry that children and babies will go hungry.

In my America.

Where is that America that I pledged allegiance to?

I cry for this patriotic, flag-waving, red, white, and blue, idealistic  7-year-old girl.  who believed in the inherent goodness of America, as she lived out her parents’ post-war American suburban dream.

Now, on our 250th Independence Day, we are being stripped of our freedoms and rights.

This is not my father’s America.

This is not my America.

This is not Our America

And it brings me to tears.

As an American.

Copyright (©) 2026 Sally Edelstein All Rights Reserved

Coming Soon- The Video of “I Am An American”