The parade is over. The fireworks are spent shells in the community park and the sparkler ends are littered on the sidewalk. The biggest birthday party the country had ever thrown is over, and the morning after feels the way every morning after feels after a big event— is it over already?

You didn’t know it then, but you were holding something that morning. You’re still holding it now.

Fifty years to the day, here we are again. America turned 250 yesterday. And if you lived through the last one, you’ve spent this whole year the way I have — remembering. The neighbor who went overboard. The song that wouldn’t leave your head. School House Rock. The painted fire hydrants. The smell of the cook out. Whatever the thing was for you.

Today is about remembering and witnessing. I’ll go first, because I’m asking you to do something and it isn’t fair to ask without going first.

I was eight years old. I got to visit the Bicentennial Wagon Train. They let us climb up into it three kids at a time. I remember the smell of the canvas and the feel of the rough wood of the seats. That’s the thing that stayed. The smell of the canvas, warm from the sun, and the hard wooden seat under me, and thinking for just a second that I was going across the country.

That’s it. That’s the whole memory. It isn’t a story. It’s a smell and a seat and a half-second of a feeling.

And here’s what I’ve learned doing this memory keeping for a year: that’s exactly enough. The small ones are the real ones. Nobody needs your essay on what America means. They need the canvas. They need your version of the canvas — the one detail that comes back the second you stop reaching for the big picture and just stand still in one moment and look around.

So let’s stand still for a second. Where were you?

Not “where were you in 1976” — that’s too big, you can’t answer that. I mean: pick one moment. The curb you sat on. The kitchen you were standing in. The backseat of the car. Put yourself there and look around, the way you’d look around a room you just walked into. What’s the first thing you see?

That’s the whole trick. You don’t summon the memory. You stand in one spot and let it gather around you.

When you’ve got it — when you can see one specific moment — write down three sentences. Not good ones. Ugly ones. Don’t make it nice, don’t explain what it meant, don’t tell me it was a simpler time. Just put down what was there. What you saw, what you heard, what it smelled like, who was in the room. Three sentences. Mine were the canvas, the seat, the going-somewhere. Yours are sitting right there waiting.

That’s how you save a memory. And a saved memory shouldn’t sit in a drawer.

So what do you do with a memory?

For the last year, this newsletter has been the place those memories came. Starting today, I want to give you somewhere they can live for good, long time now that this project has wound down. Real archives such as The Library of Congress, the official 250th story collection, and your own county historical society (which is very likely sitting there right now wishing someone would send them memories).

I’ve put the whole thing together: how to find the memory, how to write it down without being a writer, and exactly where to send it so it lasts into a small kit. It’s called the Bicentennial Memory Project Toolkit.

→ Get the Toolkit here (click here)

It’s my parting gift, because this project is finishing, and this is the right way to finish it: not by holding onto your memories, but by handing you the tools to put them somewhere permanent yourself.

You were there and your memories matter. Record them and place it somewhere it’ll outlast all of us.

Did You Know?

• The wagons didn’t leave when the party did. The Bicentennial Wagon Train’s wagons stayed on display at Valley Forge through September 30, 1976 — almost three months after the Fourth. The celebration ended; the wagons lingered.

• Most Bicentennial memories were never written down. There was no app, no organized effort, no easy way to save a moment. Which means fifty years later, the only copy of your 1976 is still inside you.

• A lot of 1976 already vanished. Town committee records, local newspaper photos, the program from your school pageant… much of it was thrown out years ago. The personal memory in your head may now be the last surviving record of things that really happened.

Yesterday America turned 250, and someday someone will ask you what that was like, too. Take a moment and record what you did this weekend too. But first, the last one. You were there for the last one. Let’s make sure that’s on the record before it’s gone.

Thank you for following along with this community memory project for the past year. You might enjoy reading coverage of the project in the news or our most read post (it surprised me it was this one!) before you go.

Now go save those memories!

—Denyse
Bicentennial Memory Project

The Bicentennial Memory Project ran original posts on Sundays from July 2025-July 2026. If you have a memory from 1976 — something you saw, something your family did, something you found in the attic — I created a kit to help you write, share, and save it.

They’re coming from every direction. From the west on the Great Wagon Road. From the south through Virginia. From the north through New York. Conestoga wagons and Prairie Schooners, canvas tops bleached by a year of sun, wheels caked with mud from a dozen states. Riders on horseback flank them, hundreds deep. The sound is enormous — hooves, wheels, harness brass, people shouting. After 15 months, 17,000 miles, and 249 official encampments, the Bicentennial Wagon Train Pilgrimage has come home.

Before we go any further — if you’re enjoying these Sunday letters, so you never miss one. They’re free, and they land in your inbox through July.

Subscribe now

More than 300 wagons converged on Valley Forge that afternoon. Nearly 5,000 people on horseback rode with them. They set up camp below the National Memorial Arch — the same field where Washington’s army had suffered through the winter of 1777-78. The wagons parked in rows. The horses were unhitched and watered. Campfires started. For one night, Valley Forge looked the way it might have looked 200 years earlier, except that the wagoneers had Winnebagos parked behind the tree line and a Penn State musical to perform after dinner.

An estimated 850,000 people visited the encampment over July 3rd and 4th. On July 3rd alone, roughly 80,000 showed up.

Then came the morning.

July 4, 1976. The 200th birthday of the United States of America. It rained early. The crowd waited. And then, just after 8:45 AM, a helicopter appeared over the park.

President Gerald Ford stepped out with his 18-year-old daughter Susan. Secretary of the Interior Thomas Kleppe and Representative Richard Schulze of Pennsylvania had flown with them. The crowd roared.

Ford walked to the wagon train encampment. He greeted the wagonmasters. He accepted the Rededication Scrolls, the signed pledges that 22 million Americans had put their names to in town squares and fairgrounds and school gymnasiums across the country. One in ten people in the nation had signed a scroll. One of the last people to add his name was Ford himself.

Then Ford did something that had nothing to do with wagons but had everything to do with the ground he was standing on. He signed the legislation making Valley Forge a National Historical Park. Pennsylvania was giving Valley Forge to the nation. The state park became a national park, right there, on that field, with the wagons behind him.

Ford’s speech began at 9:10 AM. It was broadcast on live nationwide television. He spoke for about 20 minutes. Then he was gone.

By 9:40 AM, Ford and Susan were back in the helicopter, lifting off for Philadelphia. They landed 20 minutes later. At Independence Hall, Ford signed the Bicentennial Day Declaration and gave another address. By 1:00 PM, they were airborne again — this time heading for New York Harbor, where Operation Sail was underway and 200 tall ships from 30 nations were filling the harbor.

Ford landed on the deck of the USS Forrestal. Betty Ford met them there — she had flown directly from Washington. At exactly 2:00 PM, Ford rang a ceremonial bell 13 times, one for each original colony. All across the country, other bells rang at the same moment. The Liberty Bell in Philadelphia was tapped. Church bells sounded in small towns. For two minutes, America rang.

By late afternoon, the Fords were back at the White House. That evening, they watched fireworks from the Truman Balcony — the display that an estimated 500,000 people saw from the Mall below.

The President of the United States had traveled over 500 miles by car, helicopter, and airplane in a single day. Valley Forge, Philadelphia, New York, Washington. Four cities. Four speeches. One bill signing. Thirteen bell rings. And he started the morning standing next to a covered wagon.

Back at Valley Forge, the wagoneers stayed.

The encampment continued through the entire summer, all the way to September 30. The Penn State shows kept performing. Visitors kept coming. But the core group — the people who had ridden for months, who had quit jobs and pulled kids from school knew the big moment had passed. Holly Gruver Franciamone, whose father had coordinated the entire pilgrimage, remembered the end of July 4th as bittersweet. The people she’d spent months with on the road were going home. It was over.

And the scrolls?

Twenty-two million signatures on paper. Each scroll had spaces for 24 names. That’s roughly 917,000 sheets of paper. Stacked, they’d stand as tall as a 20-story building. They were supposed to be enshrined at Valley Forge. Some were reportedly microfilmed. But over the decades, the physical scrolls seem to have disappeared. The last superintendent of Valley Forge as a state institution is gone. The woman who oversaw PR for the wagon train is gone. The park’s chief advocate and preservationist is gone. Almost everyone who could say where those scrolls went has died.

Somewhere — in a basement, a storage unit, a government warehouse — there may be a stack of paper 214 feet tall with the signatures of 22 million Americans who, in the spring and summer of 1976, sat down at a table draped in stars and stripes and signed their name next to a pledge about freedom. A boy in Wisconsin used a fountain pen and India ink because his mother said it would be more authentic.

Nobody has found them yet.

This wraps up the three-part Bicentennial Wagon Train series. Part 1 covered how the pilgrimage got approved. Part 2 covered life on the road. If you missed them, they’re in the archive.

The Bicentennial Wagon Train Pilgrimage to Pennsylvania 1976 Facebook group has been collecting memories from participants for years — photos, journals, audio cassette recordings. If you were there, or if someone you love was there, go find them. A fantastic resource.

Did You Know?

• Ford’s July 4th schedule was planned minute by minute. White House memos from the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library show the day timed down to five-minute increments — including a 35-minute block marked simply “PERSONAL” at a Philadelphia hotel suite between events.

• The White House debated 53 separate planning questions for the July 4th weekend. Should the President plant a tree? Should he issue a proclamation to Americans overseas? What did Grant do at the Centennial? Should Cabinet members have assigned Bicentennial duties? The memo reads like a final exam.

• Seven different speech outlines were drafted for Ford’s July 4th addresses. The White House consulted Dr. Daniel Boorstin (Librarian of Congress) and Dr. Irving Kristol to develop themes. Ford met with advisors the morning of June 15 to choose his direction. The deadline for first drafts was one week later.

• The wagons stayed at Valley Forge through September 30, 1976 — nearly three months after the July 4th celebration. The state wagons remained on display for visitors all summer long.

Your Turn

Were you at Valley Forge on July 3rd or 4th, 1976? Did you see the helicopter? Did you watch it on TV? Were you somewhere else that day — at a parade, a cookout, a fireworks show — while Valley Forge was happening? What do you remember about the Fourth of July, 1976?

Email your memory to bicentennialmemoryproject@gmail.com or drop it in the comments.

Six days!! In six days, America turns 250. Fifty years ago this week, a president stepped out of a helicopter at Valley Forge and signed a piece of paper next to a covered wagon. What will you do to remember about this week?

—Denyse

Bicentennial Memory Project

YouTube Library

His name is Bruce Blackburn. He’s a graphic designer at Chermayeff & Geismar Associates in New York. His assignment is simple and completely impossible: take 200 years of American history and turn it into a logo that would work on a lapel pin. The American Revolution Bicentennial Commission needs a symbol. The nation’s 200th birthday is coming, and somebody has to draw the thing that goes on everything.

Before we go any further — if you’re enjoying these Sunday letters, subscribe so you never miss one. They’re free, and they land in your inbox every week through July 2026.

Subscribe now

Blackburn started where you’d expect. The flag. The eagle. The Liberty Bell. The stars from the Betsy Ross flag. He threw most of them out. Too obvious. Too stiff. Too military. What he wanted was something that felt like a celebration, not a government seal.

He landed on the five-pointed star. But the star was too sharp, too aggressive. So he wrapped it in ribbons of red, white, and blue — like patriotic bunting at a Fourth of July parade — and the sharp edges softened into curves. A second star appeared in the negative space around the first. Two stars. Two centuries. One symbol.

Nixon, who was still president when the design was submitted, thought it wasn’t governmental enough. He asked Blackburn to add text around the outside and make it look more like an official insignia. Blackburn complied. The words American Revolution Bicentennial and 1776–1976 circled the star in Helvetica. The logo was approved. And then it ate the country.

If you were alive in 1976, you could not escape this symbol.

It was on postage stamps. It was on coins — the quarter, the half dollar, and the dollar were all redesigned for the Bicentennial, with special reverse designs featuring a colonial drummer, Independence Hall, and the Liberty Bell against the moon. It was on coffee mugs and belt buckles and commemorative plates your grandmother ordered from a magazine ad. It flew on flags outside every government building in America.

It was on mailboxes. People painted their mailboxes red, white, and blue and slapped the star on the side. It was on fire hydrants — whole towns painted their hydrants as Revolutionary War soldiers and stuck that star somewhere on the base. It was on cereal boxes and soda cans and paper napkins and plastic cups at every cookout from Memorial Day to Labor Day.

It was on trains. Nearly every railroad in the country painted at least one locomotive in red, white, and blue. The Detroit, Toledo & Ironton gave theirs the number 1776.

And it was on the side of a building at NASA. Not a small building. The Vehicle Assembly Building at Kennedy Space Center — one of the largest buildings on Earth — got the Bicentennial star painted on its exterior in 1976. It stayed there for 22 years, until NASA painted over it in 1998 with its own logo. For two decades, the symbol of America’s 200th birthday looked down on every Space Shuttle launch.

Blackburn once found his star reproduced in a garden in red, white, and blue flowers.

The government technically restricted how the official symbol could be used. But America didn’t care. The star showed up on homemade quilts and hand-painted signs and craft fair projects and school bulletin boards and church newsletters. The Henry Ford Museum has an appliqued pillow made by a 72-year-old woman in Detroit. Somebody made belt buckles. Somebody made ashtrays. If it held still long enough, somebody put the star on it.

This is what total visual saturation looked like before the internet. There was no social media to share it. There was no algorithm pushing it into your feed. It just showed up, physically, on the objects in your daily life — the mug you drank from, the stamp on the envelope, the flag on the pole outside the post office, the fire hydrant on the corner. You couldn’t scroll past it. You walked past it. It was in your hand.

By July 5, 1976, the star was everywhere and it was also, somehow, already fading. The commemorative coins went into junk drawers. The plates went into china cabinets. The flags came down. The mailboxes got repainted. The fire hydrants weathered. The railroads repainted their locomotives. And slowly, over the next few years, the Bicentennial star became something you only saw at yard sales and antique malls, sandwiched between macramé owls and avocado-green kitchen appliances.

But if you were there — if you lived inside that visual saturation for 18 months — you never forgot it. You can still draw it from memory. The soft star. The red, white, and blue ribbons. The double star. You didn’t know Bruce Blackburn’s name, but you knew his work better than any logo in your life.

He died in February 2021 at 82. He also designed NASA’s famous “worm” logo. He never got a bonus for the Bicentennial star. Maybe an “attaboy,” he once said.

Did You Know?

• The Bicentennial logo first appeared on a U.S. postage stamp in 1971 — five years before the actual celebration. It was one of the earliest uses of the symbol and helped build recognition before the main event.

• The Bicentennial coins are still in circulation. The 1975-76 quarter (with the colonial drummer on the reverse), half dollar (Independence Hall), and dollar (Liberty Bell and moon) were minted in both standard and 40% silver collector editions. Check your change jar.

• Philadelphia chose its own Bicentennial symbol by public vote. Residents mailed in ballots printed in the daily newspapers, choosing from five designs. The winner used the number 76 shaped like the crack and clapper of the Liberty Bell.

• The government placed heavy restrictions on commercial use of the logo, but Blackburn himself said it was designed to be aggressive about attention. His exact words: it was intended to “hog the spotlight.”

Your Turn

What do you still have with the Bicentennial star on it? A plate? A coin? A mug? A flag? A quilt your grandmother made? Is it in the china cabinet, the attic, or the junk drawer? We want to see it. Take a photo and share it in the comments or email it to bicentennialmemoryproject@gmail.com.

In 20 days, America turns 250. In 1976, Bruce Blackburn drew a star on a commuter train and it ended up on the side of a building at NASA. What will the symbol of 2026 be? Will anyone remember it in 50 years?

—Denyse

Bicentennial Memory Project

The clip-clop of heavy draft horses on asphalt. The creak of wooden wheels with hidden roller bearings. The jingle of harness brass. Then the first Conestoga comes around the bend, canvas top swaying, and behind it another, and another — 40 wagons long, with riders on horseback flanking both sides. They’re doing about four miles an hour. They have been doing four miles an hour since last June.

Before we go any further, if you’re enjoying these Sunday letters, subscribe so you never miss one. They’re free, and they land in your inbox every week through July 2026.

Subscribe now

This is what the Bicentennial Wagon Train Pilgrimage looked like from the road.

In Part 1, we covered the memos — how a Philadelphia ad agency and the Pennsylvania Bicentennial Commission convinced the federal government to send covered wagons across America. Today we’re on the trail. What did it actually feel like to ride in one of these things? What happened when the wagons pulled into your town?

The daily rhythm was simple and relentless. Wake up. Hitch the horses. Roll 20 miles. Make camp. Put on a show. Do it again tomorrow. The draft horses pulled three days and rested every fourth day, rotated with fresh hitches so no team was overworked. The saddle horses — ridden by outriders, local volunteers, and anyone who showed up with a mount — had it harder. They carried weight. But most only rode part of the route, peeling off after a day or two while the core crew kept moving east.

The core crew was young. Five separate companies of Penn State University students — actors, singers, musicians — traveled with the five wagon train segments for the entire journey. They lived together in pairs of Winnebagos, one for the men, one for the women. They performed a patriotic musical written specifically for the pilgrimage every single night at every single stop. Over 2,000 performances in 15 months.

Think about that. These were college kids in their early twenties, sleeping in Winnebagos, performing the same 45-minute show in a different small town every night for a year. They did it in rain. They did it in South Carolina heat and Wyoming cold. The wagons were designed to fold open into portable stages, and the performers climbed up and performed in period costumes — buckskins and calico — under whatever sky showed up that evening.

The audiences loved it. Towns didn’t just watch the wagon train pass through. They came out and met it. Local saddle clubs rode alongside in period costumes. Women held quilting bees. Somebody always made soup in an iron pot. School bands played. 4-H clubs showed up. Square dance groups performed after the Penn State show. At one stop in South Carolina, volunteers demonstrated lye soap making and displayed antique quilts while an exhibition of arrowheads and artifacts filled a nearby hall.

This was not a parade. This was a visit. The wagon train stayed overnight, camped in fairgrounds and local parks, and the townspeople came to them. Spectators watched the ritual of unhitching, watering, feeding, and grooming the horses. Kids got to touch the wagons. Families shared meals with the wagoneers around campfires. It was part county fair, part living history exhibit, part something that doesn’t really have a name anymore.

And then there were the scrolls.

At every encampment, a small stage appeared — maybe 10 by 12 feet, draped in stars and stripes. Behind a table sat a woman in a colonial dress. On the table were the Rededication Scrolls. Each scroll had spaces for 24 signatures. You sat in a chair, picked up a pen, and signed your name beneath a pledge reaffirming your belief in the principles of the Declaration of Independence. One boy in Wisconsin used a fountain pen and India ink because his mother said it would be more authentic.

Pony Express riders on horseback fanned out from the main train, galloping into surrounding towns that weren’t on the wagon route. They picked up signed scrolls from Bicentennial communities and delivered them back to the state wagons. In Kansas, saddle club members relayed scrolls from town to town in a chain — one group riding from the county line, handing off to the next group at a crossroads, who handed off to the next at the edge of town. The scrolls piled up inside the wagons like cargo.

Some people joined for a day. Some joined for a week. A few quit their jobs, pulled their kids from school, and rode the whole way. Marilyn “Micki” Robison of Naches, Washington, served as National Trails Coordinator, crisscrossing the country to keep all seven trains on schedule. She hired and fired staff, solved problems, and rode alongside whenever she could. By the end, she was the only person who had seen every train.

People brought their own wagons. The program had provided official Conestoga replicas for each state, but the rules said anyone with a wagon and horses could ride along. The group swelled from a couple hundred participants to over a thousand. By the time the trains converged on Pennsylvania, 300 wagons and nearly 5,000 people on horseback were heading for Valley Forge.

Somewhere along the way, the pilgrimage stopped being a government program and became something else. It became the trip. It became the story these people would tell for the rest of their lives. One participant’s daughter later described the July 4th arrival as bittersweet — because when it was over, the people she’d spent months with on the road were going home. It was all over. Like the little bit of sadness people feel on New Year’s Eve. You look forward to something for so long and then — that’s it.

But first they had to get to Valley Forge. And that’s next.

This is Part 2 of a three-part series on the Bicentennial Wagon Train Pilgrimage. Part 3, arriving the last Sunday in June, covers the arrival at Valley Forge, the morning President Ford flew in by helicopter, and the 22 million signatures that vanished.

If you rode with the wagon train — or watched it come through your town — the Bicentennial Wagon Train Pilgrimage to Pennsylvania 1976 Facebook group is collecting memories, photos, journals, and audio recordings from participants. They’ve been at it for years. Go say hello!

Did You Know?

• The Penn State wagon train show had a 30th anniversary reunion in 2006. Original cast members returned to Penn State to rehearse and perform the show again, then took it on the road to Fort Roberdeau, a Revolutionary War-era fort near Altoona. At sunset, the field looked like Valley Forge.

• The wagons traveled by river, too. On sections where the trail crossed major waterways, the wagons were loaded onto barges and floated — down the Missouri, Mississippi, and Ohio rivers. In Wheeling, West Virginia, a barge carrying the wagon train docked overnight at the wharf. The local paper covered it like a UFO sighting.

• Bill Howard, who led the Western States’ segment into Valley Forge, was one of only a few Americans certified to handle a six-horse Conestoga team. His own team of dappled gray Percheron draft horses pulled a Conestoga that had been displayed around the tri-state area before the pilgrimage began.

• Corporate sponsors included Gulf Oil, Holiday Inns, and the Aero-Mayflower Transit Company. The official wagons were crafted in Arkansas. Insurance and small salaries of $100/month for wagonmasters were part of the budget. But most participants were volunteers who paid their own way.

Your Turn

If the wagon train came through your town, what do you remember? The horses? The show? The scroll table? Did your school band play? Did you sign a scroll? Did someone in your family ride along for a day or a week?

Drop your memory in the comments below.

In 27 days, America turns 250. Fifty years ago this summer, people quit their jobs to ride in covered wagons across the country for a birthday party. What would it take to make you do something like that today?

—Denyse

Bicentennial Memory Project

YouTube video library of the Bicentennial Wagon Train:

I was seven years old when it ended. It was April 1975, and I didn’t understand what had ended or what it meant. All I knew was that it still hung over everything. It was a shadow over my whole childhood. The adults talked about it when they thought we weren’t listening. The words came in low voices from the kitchen, from the front porch after dark, from the car when my parents thought I was asleep in the back seat.

Before we go any further — if you’re enjoying these Sunday letters, subscribe so you never miss one. They’re free, and they land in your inbox every week through July 2026.

Subscribe now

What I understood as a kid was this: people were so, so angry about it. Not angry the way you get angry about a traffic ticket or a bad call in a football game. Angry in a way that had no place to go. They didn’t want to be there. But they felt the country had to be there. Those two things lived side by side and nobody could resolve them.

I grew up in Conshohocken, Pennsylvania. Working-class town on the Schuylkill River. When you graduated high school you went to work in a factory. Across the river was the high income Main Line — Bryn Mawr, Haverford, Ardmore. The boys from Conshohocken got drafted. The boys from the Main Line, by and large, did not. They went on to college and careers.

When I was an adult, my dad told me the story of watching his friends from high school get drafted and go and come back in body bags. I don’t know how many friends that was. I was afraid to ask. I knew it was something he carried and I knew it was something I never had to carry myself. The people from my high school just graduated from high school.

It seemed like the cool thing in 1976 was to be against the war. That was what the music was about. The movies. The protest culture. Everybody was against it. But the people in the towns where I grew up, they had to serve in it. And I think that opposition, that cultural rejection of the war, ended up making the people who were forced to serve, or who chose to serve, feel like they’d done something wrong. I can’t imagine what it would have been like to come back from that and try to be normal.

Nobody got an apology. Not the Vietnamese. Not the men who served. Everything just moved on and moved forward. Fifty-eight thousand, two hundred and twenty names. Pennsylvania alone lost over 3,100.

I first visited the Vietnam Veterans Memorial on a family trip in 1985. The minute I saw it, tears just started falling. You could feel the heartache coming off of it. It was crowded. You had to wait in line to walk through. Items were piled knee-high all along the base of the wall — letters, flowers, boots, photographs, medals, teddy bears. When you approached the memorial, it snuck up on you. You didn’t even know it was there. And then suddenly there was this mass of people standing in front of a silent, shouting structure of just names. You could see the toll. You could count it, panel by panel.

I visited it again in the fall of 2025. It was just me and my husband and one other person. One young volunteer stood nearby with an old, dog-eared book to help locate names. There were maybe 10 objects along the entire wall. Lonely by themselves.

I looked around and thought: where are all the people who remember this?

And I realized that the people who remembered those names — the mothers, the fathers, the high school friends, the girlfriends who never married anyone else — are probably gone themselves now. The Wall received over 400,000 items since it was dedicated in 1982. The National Park Service still collects them every evening, catalogs them, stores them in a warehouse in Maryland. But the tide of objects has slowed. The people who left them are leaving too.

This is what a memorial looks like when the living memory starts to fade. The names are still there. The granite is still black and polished and reflects your face back at you when you stand close enough. But the crowd that once stood three deep is gone. The line to walk through is gone. The pile of boots and letters at the base is almost gone.https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Vietnam_Memorial_Wall_with_Washington_Monument.jpg

How do we learn from this? How do we keep events like this from splitting us apart? How do we heal when they’re over? Is the monument enough? It seems necessary. But standing there last fall, with my husband and one stranger and one volunteer with a worn-out book, it felt like it’s just not enough.

Fifty years ago, America was celebrating its 200th birthday. There were fireworks and wagon trains and tall ships and parades. And in towns like Conshohocken, there were families who weren’t celebrating. They were carrying names that nobody was allowed to say out loud at the dinner table.

This post is for them.

Did You Know?

• 58,220 U.S. military personnel died in the Vietnam War, according to the Defense Casualty Analysis System. Their names are inscribed on 140 panels of black granite in Washington, D.C. The largest panel holds 704 names.

• Pennsylvania lost over 3,100 men in Vietnam — the fourth-highest total of any state, behind California, New York, and Texas. The Pennsylvania State Archives holds grave registration cards, bonus administration files, and governors’ condolence correspondence.

• More than 400,000 items have been left at the Wall since 1982. The National Park Service collects them daily and stores them at the Museum Resource Center in Maryland. The collection includes letters, medals, photographs, a motorcycle, a piece of a Huey helicopter, and a child’s first sweater brought by a mother who wrote: “I wanted to bring your teddy bear but just couldn’t part with it.”

• The memorial was not built until 1982 — six years after the Bicentennial. On July 4, 1976, there was no wall. There were no names in granite. There was only the silence in the kitchen and the low voices on the porch.

Your Turn

Were you allowed to talk about Vietnam in your house? What did you understand as a kid? What did you have to learn later, on your own? Did your town send boys who didn't come back?

If you have a memory about Vietnam, consider sharing it in the comments.

In 41 days, America turns 250. Before we celebrate, some things deserve to be said out loud.

—Denyse

Bicentennial Memory Project

It is typed on official White House stationery. It is addressed to a senior advisor to the President of the United States. And it is dead serious about the question of whether Conestoga wagon wheels need roller bearings for modern highways. This is how the Bicentennial Wagon Train Pilgrimage to Pennsylvania got approved. With memos.

Before we go any further — if you’re enjoying these Sunday letters, subscribe so you never miss one. They’re free, and they land in your inbox every week through July 2026.

Subscribe now

Here is what actually happened.

In the early 1970s, the Bicentennial Commission of Pennsylvania had a problem. The nation’s 200th birthday was coming. Every state wanted a piece of the celebration. But Pennsylvania — home of Independence Hall, the Liberty Bell, and Valley Forge — felt a particular ownership of July 4, 1776. They needed something big. Something no other state could copy.

Someone in a conference room in Philadelphia said the words “wagon train.”

The pitch was simple and completely insane. Build authentic replicas of Conestoga wagons and Prairie Schooners — one for every state in the union. Hitch them to teams of draft horses. Send them west to east across the entire country, reversing the path of westward expansion. Have them follow the actual historic trails — the Oregon Trail, the Santa Fe Trail, the Mormon Trail, the Natchez Trace. Collect signatures from Americans along the way on “Rededication Scrolls” reaffirming their belief in the nation’s founding principles. And bring it all home to Valley Forge by July 4, 1976.

The whole thing would take over a year.

The ad agency managing the program, Aitkin-Kynett of Philadelphia, wrote to the White House in early 1975 with an urgent message. The economy was shaky. Major corporations were sitting on their wallets. The first wagons were scheduled to roll on June 8, 1975, and the funding wasn’t there.

George Shannon, vice president of Aitkin-Kynett, put it plainly in a letter to John Marsh, Counselor to the President. The press had picked up the story because it was dramatic and romantic. Americans from coast to coast were writing in, desperate to participate. But the money hadn’t followed the excitement. Shannon warned that if the program collapsed, the public would blame the government, because people assumed something this big had to be a government program.

And then he wrote a line that belongs in a time capsule: “It is my personal belief that there will be a national hue and cry if this program is terminated.”

He was right. The program did not get terminated.

Five separate wagon train segments launched from different parts of the country. The Northwest route started at the Peace Arch in Blaine, Washington. Another began in California. A third wound up from the deep South. They followed seven different historic routes, rolling through towns and cities at about 20 miles a day — roughly the same pace as wagons 150 years earlier. The horses wore special borium shoes for traction on modern pavement. The wagons had roller bearings hidden in the wheels and hard rubber treads on the rims.

At every stop, the wagons put on a show. Penn State University’s Department of Theatre and Music had written a patriotic musical specifically for the pilgrimage. A press release from the period described the audience reaction as ranging “from cheers to tears and from bravos to hysteria.” Local glee clubs and square dance groups performed in return. School bands came out. Pony Express riders on horseback fanned out from the main train, picking up signed scrolls from surrounding towns and delivering them to the state wagons.

Then came the horses.

An Associated Press story out of San Diego reported that animals on a wagon trek were being mistreated. The story went national. Letters poured into the White House and the Pennsylvania Bicentennial Commission. Animal rights groups reprinted the story and circulated it widely.

There was just one problem. The story was about two teenagers riding mules from San Diego to Canada. It had nothing to do with the official Bicentennial Wagon Train Pilgrimage. The AP had garbled it.

George Ebner, executive director of the Pennsylvania Bicentennial Commission, was not amused. He fired off a letter that is still in the Ford Library files. He noted that thousands of horses had been used, thousands of individuals had loaned or rented their livestock, and he had not received a single complaint of mistreatment. The commission brought in Dr. Thomas Dunkin, a veterinarian of 10 years, founder of the National Association of Equine Practitioners, and member of the USDA’s Advisory Board on Equine Policy. Dunkin examined the animals personally. His assessment: the horses were doing fine. And in fact, some of them were getting fat.

“We tend to forget these animals are created to pull and they love it,” Dunkin said.

The wagons kept rolling.

By the time the pilgrimage ended, 22 million Americans had signed Rededication Scrolls. That was roughly one in ten people in the country. Women in colonial dresses sat at little stages with stars and stripes, at tables with chairs, in towns from Oregon to Georgia, handing out scrolls for anyone to sign.

Where are those 22 million signatures today? Nobody knows for certain. The scrolls were supposed to be enshrined at Valley Forge. But over the decades, they seem to have disappeared. These stacks of paper that, laid flat, would stand as tall as a 20-story building. The last people who might have known where they went are gone.

The wagons arrived at Valley Forge on July 3, 1976. President Ford flew in by helicopter the next morning to greet the wagonmasters and accept the scrolls. We’ll get to that day. But not yet.

This is Part 1 of a three-part series on the Bicentennial Wagon Train Pilgrimage. Part 2 covers what the journey was actually like — the daily rhythm of life on the road, the towns that came out, and the show that traveled with the wagons. Part 3 arrives the last Sunday in June, the week of the Valley Forge anniversary itself.

Before we go — there is a Facebook group called Bicentennial Wagon Train Pilgrimage to Pennsylvania 1976 that has been collecting memories from actual participants for years. Photos, journals, audio cassette recordings from people who were on the train or watched it roll through their towns. If you have a connection to this story, go find them. It’s awesome what they have collected.

Did You Know?

• The wagons traveled seven different historic routes — including the Oregon Trail, Santa Fe Trail, Mormon Trail, and the Great Wagon Road through the Appalachians — and made 249 official encampments over 15 months.

• The entire program was managed by an ad agency. Aitkin-Kynett of Philadelphia, a full-service advertising firm, handled logistics, press releases, and crisis communications for a cross-country wagon train. Their letterhead is on the official horse care press releases.

• President Ford’s July 4th schedule was extraordinary. He attended church at 7:30 AM, flew to Valley Forge to greet the wagons, helicoptered to Independence Hall in Philadelphia, then flew to New York Harbor to review Operation Sail and the Tall Ships — all before watching fireworks from the Truman Balcony that night.

Your Turn

Did the wagon train come through your town? Did your family go out to see it? Were you one of the 22 million who signed a Rededication Scroll? Tell us what you remember — the wagons, the horses, the show, the scroll table with the lady in the colonial dress.

Email your memory to bicentennialmemoryproject@gmail.com or drop it in the comments below.

In 48 days, America turns 250. In 1976, Americans across the country volunteered to lead covered wagons across the country to mark the moment. There’s people who still remember this. Talk to them and share the memories.

—Denyse

Bicentennial Memory Project

The Bicentennial Memory Project runs through July 2026. If you have a memory from 1976 — something you saw, something your family did, something you found in the attic — we want to hear it. Send your story to bicentennialmemoryproject@gmail.com.

A parade you rode in. A road trip your family took in the station wagon. A pie you decorated like a flag and ate in the backyard while fireworks popped off in every direction. Those memories are still in there, and this newsletter has room for two more of them before it wraps for good.

What could you send in? Here’s an example:

This week, fellow Substacker shared a post that is so fun. She wrote about her family’s 1976 road trip to Walt Disney World in their Pontiac Safari wagon. About riding on a candy stripers float in the Fourth of July parade in Holden, Massachusetts. About a blueberry pie she and her friend Marion decorated like an American flag and ate in the backyard with the neighbors while fireworks went off all around them.

Heather Rojo

Memories of 1976 and 2001 Anniversaries of the Revolutionary War

Do you remember the Bicentennial in 1976? Or the Quasquibicentennial in 2001? Growing up in Massachusetts, we always celebrated a year early, for example April 19, 1975 was the 200th anniversary of the Battles of Lexington and Concord. Patriot’s Day is coming soon, and it reminded me of these special anniversary memories…

Read more

5 months ago · 2 likes · Heather Rojo

It’s the kind of memory that makes you remember your own. Your town’s parade. Your family’s car. Your backyard on the night of July 4, 1976.

The Bicentennial Memory Project has two reader slots left before this newsletter publishes its final edition on July 5th. Two spots for your story to show up in a few thousand inboxes and remind a stranger that they lived through the same America you did.

Your piece doesn’t need to be long. It doesn’t need to be polished. It just needs to be real.

Send in Your Memories of 1976

Got a 1976 memory? Send it to bicentennialmemoryproject@gmail.com. Two slots. First come, first served.

And if you’re already writing about the Bicentennial on your own Substack, email me your link. I want to read it, and I want other readers to find you. Let’s get these stories linked up before the 250th arrives.

Sixty-two days from now, America turns 250. Before it does, the stories from the 200th deserve to be told. Yours included.

—Denyse

Maybe it was the Jaycees. Maybe it was the Cub Scouts. Maybe it was your weird uncle who took it upon himself. All over America that year, ordinary people decided that the most patriotic thing they could do for their country’s 200th birthday was paint the johnny pump on the corner to look like a Revolutionary War soldier, or Uncle Sam, or a Minuteman.

New here? The Bicentennial Memory Project lands in your inbox every other Sunday until July 4, 2026 — free, no fluff, just stories from the year America turned 200. Subscribe so you don’t miss the next one.

Subscribe now

Fifty years later, almost all of them are gone. But not quite all.

Here is the thing nobody planned and nobody coordinated and nobody put in a federal memo: in 1976, an enormous number of American towns painted their fire hydrants.

There was no national program. There was no committee. The American Revolution Bicentennial Administration in Washington was busy approving wagon trains and tall ships and commemorative coins. The fire hydrants were not their idea. The fire hydrants were everybody else’s idea, all at once, in thousands of towns at the same time, and that is somehow the most American thing about the whole story.

In Burbank, California, the city went all-in. Hydrants up and down the streets were painted to look like Revolutionary War figures — soldiers standing rigid at attention, red coats and blue coats, tricorn hats sculpted out of the iron caps. The Associated Press came out and took pictures. “The city of Burbank, Calif., plugs the nation’s bicentennial,” the wire copy read, in a pun the AP photographer almost certainly thought was the cleverest thing he’d written all year.

In Shawnee, Kansas, they painted them. In Kings Mountain, North Carolina, they painted them. In Norwalk and Cerritos and small towns in Ohio and big neighborhoods in Brooklyn. In Baltimore, somebody named Adam Paul has been documenting the survivors there for decades. People sent their kids out to pose next to the finished ones for the family photo album.

If you were a child in 1976, you might remember the riding-around game. Spotting them out the window of the station wagon. (You weren’t strapped in, of course. Nobody was strapped in. You were just rolling around in the way-back, free-range, hollering when you saw a good one.) Some were folk-art masterpieces. Some were enthusiastic and bad. Some were Betsy Ross with a face only her mother could love. They were all somebody’s, and that was the point.

They were not built to last. Most were repainted within a year or two — fire-hydrant red, regulation yellow, whatever the municipal code required. Time and weather and water department crews took care of the rest.

But here is the small miracle. In New York City, a writer named Kevin Walsh, who runs a website called Forgotten New York, has spent twenty-plus years documenting the ones that are still standing. He calls them Bicentennial johnny pumps. Most of the survivors are the old “fat” hydrants, the high-pressure models from the 1910s that the city kept installing into the 1970s, before switching to a streamlined design in the 1980s. The newer thin hydrants replaced almost all of them. The fat ones got pulled.

Almost all of them. A few are still out there. Walsh found them on Beekman Street in Port Richmond, on Decker Avenue with a star detail still visible on the crown, in Eastchester, in the Bronx, on a few quiet corners of Staten Island. Faded. Repainted, sometimes badly. Still there.

Every fire hydrant in New York City has its installation date stamped near the base. Walsh figured out you can verify them. If the date reads 1976 or earlier and the paint underneath the regulation yellow has any red and blue in it at all, you are almost certainly looking at a survivor.

Fifty years. A few coats of municipal paint. The same iron, the same corner, the same neighborhood that has changed around it three or four times over.

Almost nobody knows they’re there. The kids who painted them are in their sixties now. The adults who supervised are mostly gone. The wire photos are in archives. But the hydrants — a handful of them, in a few specific places — are still on the corner where somebody put them in 1976.

If you remember a hydrant in your hometown, it almost certainly isn’t there anymore. But it was. And somebody painted it on purpose. And you saw it. And fifty years later, you still remember.

That counts.

DID YOU KNOW?

• The Burbank, California, hydrant project made the AP wire on April 23, 1975 over a year before the actual Bicentennial. Some towns started painting almost as soon as the planning began, and by the summer of 1976, the phenomenon had spread coast to coast with no national coordination at all.

• In Baltimore, a man named Adam Paul once documented the survivors on an early personal website. The page is gone now. When he died, the website did too. The hydrants might be too. Even the record of the record is disappearing.

• NYC fire hydrants have their installation date stamped near the base. If you live in New York and want to play detective, the date is right there. Anything reading 1976 or earlier is a candidate.

• The Spirit of ‘76 hydrants were almost entirely a grassroots effort. No federal funds. No program. Just Jaycees, Cub Scouts, garden clubs, civic associations, and regular people who decided their corner needed a Betsy Ross.

YOUR TURN

Did your hometown paint its fire hydrants in 1976?

Do you remember a specific one — the corner, the design, who painted it, what it looked like?

And here’s the long shot: does one still exist where you live? We’d love to see a photo. Reply to this email or post it in the comments. Let’s see how many survivors we can find.

—Denyse

The Bicentennial Memory Project

Have a 1976 memory you’ve been carrying around? We’d love to read it. Send it to bicentennialmemoryproject@gmail.com — a paragraph or ten pages, polished or rough, it doesn’t matter. Every memory belongs in the archive.

A contrary college kid. A Eurail pass. A summer abroad while the rest of the country waved flags and lit fireworks. For fifty years, that was the story he told about the Bicentennial…. until a notebook turned up in his garage..

Before you keep reading, if a friend forwarded this to you, or you stumbled in from somewhere on the internet, welcome! The Bicentennial Memory Project is free, it lands in your inbox on Sundays until July 5, 2026, and it only exists because readers like you keep sharing what you remember. Subscribe so you don’t miss the next one.

Subscribe now

What found in that notebook is the kind of thing that makes you wonder what your own memory has been quietly rewriting all these years.

Misremembering My Bicentennial

For years my story about the 1976 U.S. Bicentennial summer went something like this:

Back then I was a contrary college student, between my sophomore and junior year. I thought I would be clever and celebrate the Bicentennial by leaving the country. That was the summer I went to Europe, instead of staying and participating in all the, to my mind, somewhat overblown festivities in my own nation. What did I know, I was twenty.

But you know what? That turns out not to be accurate. At all. True, I did travel through Europe with a friend for the Summer of 1976. Nonetheless, it wasn’t as I remembered it.

Recovered in my garage just this weekend was the diary I wrote on that trip. It started ten days after the Fourth of July. I left for my grand tour of Europe on the 14^th of July, Bastille Day. (I don’t think I realized that at the time.) Apparently, I was in the United States, in California, on the 4^th of July. I don’t remember any of it. Was I working at the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk, my summer job, saving money for my upcoming trip and next year at college? No specific memories. I just have the recollections of too many hot, summer days sweating in a polyester blue jump suit sheparding thousands of sunburnt, over sugared children and teenagers onto mildly scary amusement park rides.

The most important day of the Bicentennial did not even register on me. And that seems especially regrettable now that I am the recognized City Historian for my current community. Oh, the shame.

What I do remember of the Bicentennial summer were the crazy mishmash of memories of too many European cities in too short a time. London, Dover, Calais, Paris, Reims, Chalon-sur-Soâme, Geneva, Montreux, Interlaken, Bern, Innsbruck, Salzburg, Bad Kreuznach, Wörrstadt, Heidelberg, Würzberg, München, Rothenburg ob der Tauber, Mainz, Koblenz, Köln, Delft, and, finally, Amsterdam.

Looking back on it, now, 50 years later, I do think I got something out of being out of the country during the Bicentennial summer. One, I was not the only American spending the summer in Europe. However, there were far fewer tourists there than usual. That’s what the British, French, Swiss, West German, and Dutch kept telling me. Along with, “Why are you here, now of all times?” Second, I got a glimpse of that place so many of my ancestors had left. And I got an appreciation of all they left behind when they came to America. Third, I got a sense of the fact that there is a much bigger world out there than just my small part of North America. And that there were real challenges being played out in Europe. (I spent part of a week staying with a family friend who was serving with the U.S. Army in West Germany. Tanks, trucks, troops, and bases were there for a real, possible World War III).

So, I really didn’t take part in the Bicentennial summer as I thought I did. I now think I missed something special, even though I got something else special in its place. This time around, though, I will be around for the sesquicentennial celebrations. The historian in me will take (and keep) better notes.

publishes Other People’s Photos and Stories here on Substack

Did You Know?

• The Eiffel Tower had a particularly quiet July in 1976. European tourism boards across the continent reported a noticeable dip in American visitors that summer — most Americans stayed home for the Bicentennial, which made the ones who did travel stick out like sore (red, white, and blue) thumbs.

• Bastille Day 1976 fell on a Wednesday. While our reader was climbing the Eiffel Tower, France was throwing its own enormous party — and the French were genuinely puzzled why any American would skip their own country’s 200th birthday to attend someone else’s national holiday.

• The Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk was already 69 years old in 1976. It opened in 1907 and is the oldest surviving amusement park in California. The Giant Dipper roller coaster, which our reader almost certainly loaded riders onto that summer, had been running since 1924.

• U.S. Army forces in West Germany numbered around 200,000 in 1976. The Cold War was not winding down — it was sitting in tank formations along the Fulda Gap, waiting to see what happened next.

Your Turn

Where were you on July 4, 1976? Not where you think you were — where you actually were. Reply and tell us! And if you’ve ever pulled out an old diary, letter, or photograph and discovered that your memory had been quietly rewriting things for year, we especially want to hear that one.

In 84 days, America turns 250. This time, take the picture. Keep the ticket stub. Write it down. Future you will want to know what really happened.

Have a 1976 memory you’ve been carrying around? We’d love to read it. Send it to bicentennialmemoryproject@gmail.com — a paragraph or ten pages, polished or rough, it doesn’t matter. Every memory belongs in the archive.

This week marks the final contribution from who helped bring this project to life. I’m grateful for her energy and enthusiasm in getting us started, and I wish her well in her new project of a century safe for 2026 which you can follow on ! Going forward you can contact for all things related to this publication–submissions, questions, etc.

Now let’s get on with ’s memories she collected from Gloria H. during a recent Bicentennial oral history workshop she ran in person.

In 1976 I was twenty-nine years old, and I was the music teacher for a little rural district. Just one school, really, and I was the only music teacher. I had all twelve grades, no kindergarten yet back then although I knew some schools had it, but ours it didn’t for a few more years. I was young enough to think I could take on anything they handed me. And that year, well… everything was the Bicentennial. You couldn’t escape it.

The school was very gung-ho about it. Every teacher was strongly encouraged to bring the Bicentennial into their classroom somehow. My roommate at the time taught social studies to the middle grade students, and I remember our kitchen table just buried in papers. She had every student choose a historic figure from 1776 and research them. Another friend had her students writing letters as if they were living in 1776, writing forward to the year 1976. Everyone was doing something clever like that.

And then there was me. Music.

I remember sitting at the piano one evening thinking, Well… what am I going to do that feels right? And the idea came to me to put together a musical review of American music through the ages. Just… tell the story through songs. That made sense to me.

I don’t remember every single song anymore. Most of them were patriotic – at least they felt that way in 1976. Some of them were songs I was already teaching anyway. My Country, ’Tis of Thee, America the Beautiful, The Battle Hymn of the Republic, and the National Anthem, so I didn’t have to teach them ones from scratch. The children already knew them. But then we mixed in things like Skip to My Lou and On Top of Old Smokey, songs that had been sung forever, really.

One of my favorites was Sweet Betsey from Pike. I taught that one to the younger kids, and they just loved it. They loved the story in it. If I Had a Hammer was very popular at the time, so the older kids sang that too, it felt modern and important to them.

Each class learned one or two songs that they would perform for the older students, and then there were four or so songs everyone learned together so we could sing as one big group for the big finale.

Some of the mothers helped me make costumes, and I helped too. Every grade was dressed from a different time period, boys and girls both. Bonnet strings, suspenders, little hats… whatever we could manage. Nobody complained. Everyone was helpful. Everyone was excited. I had so much support from the other teachers and from the mothers. It really felt like the whole school community was behind it.

We only had one performance, in the gym. The art teacher had her students make posters. Big, colorful Bicentennial posters, and when that night came, the place was beautiful. Standing room only, although of course it wasn’t a large gym like so many schools had later on. I remember standing off to the side, listening to all those children sing, and thinking, Well… this is something special.

Years later, I’d run into former students, or they’d stop me in the grocery store, and they’d say, “Do you remember that Bicentennial concert?” And of course I did. They always told me how much fun it was.

It’s one of my favorite memories from that time. Truly. When I think back on my teaching years, that night always comes back to me first.

Ready to share your 1976? Send your essay to bicentennialmemoryproject@gmail.com

Don’t worry about making it perfect. We’re not looking for perfection. We’re looking for truth, for heart, for the small moments that add up to something meaningful.

Your story matters because you were there. You lived it, you felt it, and you remember it in a way nobody else does.

The Bicentennial happened to all of us, but it happened to each of us differently. That’s what makes this collection so special—and why we need your voice in it too.

What do you remember about 1976? We’re waiting to hear from you.

Today’s memory centers on one unforgettable example: a gleaming Ross Bicentennial Bicycle, decked out in red, white, and blue and purchased just in time for a seventh birthday. What follows is not just a story about a bicycle, but about how the excitement of the Bicentennial shaped a childhood moment—and continued to echo decades later.

Our thanks to Anthony Ausiello for sharing this wonderful memory with the Bicentennial Memory Project.

It’s always been about the bicycle—my bicycle. Not because it inspired me to become a lifelong cycling enthusiast or because the bicycle was integral to some unforgettable childhood adventure. Sure, a few pleasant memories linger—racing over the sidewalks, then streets of Bensonhurst. Testing my skills and courage on hairpin turns or waiting until the last moment to slam my foot down on the brake pedal to avoid crashing into something or someone. In truth, riding a bicycle was never a significant part of my life. It was a fun activity for a little while, like eating pop rocks or roller skating, but then soon gave way to new interests. The bicycle itself, however, why I chose it, what it represented, the inspiration it provided, that’s a different story. Actually, several different stories occurring decades apart.

The bicycle at the center of this story is none other than the Ross Bicentennial Bicycle. If you haven’t already, please take a moment to glance at the photograph accompanying this essay. Don’t feel bad if your gaze is immediately drawn to the strapping young lad (me) beaming with pride, decked out in his ringer tee, too short-shorts, white socks and shoes, balanced effortlessly atop his training wheels-stabilized steel steed. Try your best, instead, to focus solely on the patriotic grandeur of the bicycle.

Never has the red, white, and blue intermingled with chrome, tassel, and a banana seat to produce such a spectacle. That surge of patriotism is exactly what struck little six-year-old me the day my parents carted the family all the way to Bay Ridge—a ten-minute trip that took thirty the way my father drove. It was late June of 1976, so the Oldsmobile windows would have been rolled down, my mother dangling a Pall Mall out the passenger seat window to keep my father’s complaints about her smoking to a minimum. My brother, nearly three-years-old, and I rolling from one side of the backseat to the other with every turn, the unused seatbelts tucked away between the cushions. July 2nd, my seventh birthday, was fast approaching, and more than anything, I wanted a new bike.

The only bicycle I’d owned to date wasn’t a bicycle at all. It was a tricycle. No, I hadn’t spent the past year looking like a circus bear riding a toddler’s trike. I hadn’t ridden anything in almost two years. Why the gap and renewed interest? Well, my parting gift from graduating Kindergarten the previous year was a case of the chicken pox. I’d spent the first two weeks of summer vacation quarantined in our small apartment, jealously watching my friends on the block playing punchball, skelly, and wiffle ball on the sidewalk below. The only good news was that the end of my quarantine would coincide with my sixth birthday.

The day before my birthday I watched my mother decorate the living room with paper crepe streamers, cover the table with a Batman paper tablecloth, and place pointy birthday party hats at each setting. My grin stretched ear to ear as I pictured all my friends and relatives jamming the room to celebrate me. My birthday party would kick off the best summer ever.

Instead, I woke up the next morning, barely able raise my head, and once I did, I immediately vomited all over the linoleum. I tried to stand and walk but stumbled like a drunken sailor. A quick car-service ride to the Emergency Room and spinal tap later revealed I’d contracted encephalitis, an inflammation of the brain. Look it up, not fun. I’d spend the next three weeks at Kings County hospital and the remainder of the summer once more at that front window watching everyone else have fun. And just my luck, I was back in fighting shape just in time for the start of school. Yay. So, a year later, with my seventh birthday approaching, I wanted the gift that symbolized the greatest expression of freedom to a six-year-old who’d spent the previous summer on lockdown—a new bicycle.

The bicycle shop, which I believe was named, “The Bicycle Shop,” was a rainbow of colors and chrome. Any and every bicycle you could imagine lined the store, wall to wall, and floor to ceiling—standard bicycles, muscle bikes, 3-speeds, 5-speeds, 10-speeds, choppers, girl bikes with wicker baskets draped between handlebars. Despite the plethora of options, my eyes immediately fixed on one particular bicycle. Why that one? You see a different type of fever had spread across the city, state, and entire country, but it wasn’t of the Saturday Night variety—that was still a year away. My chicken pox and encephalitis was long gone. In its place, Bicentennial fever flared.

The buzz and excitement for the nation’s upcoming Bicentennial celebration had snowballed in intensity for almost two years. The Bicentennial dominated every medium: comic books, magazines, television shows, commercials, classroom lessons, church sermons, and of course, every form of memorabilia one could imagine. The Bicentennial was ubiquitous as oxygen, and I’d inhaled a lungful.

It was little surprise that my eyes sailed past all the Schwinns and Huffys and landed upon that gleaming frame; those red white and blue striped handlebar grips and tassels, the Liberty Bells etched across the seat—every inch of the bicycle screamed U.S.A. The stylish font of the “Bicentennial 76” decal along the frame even added a touch of legitimacy, as if Congress had proclaimed it official state bicycle. I was certain that if Captain America rode a bicycle, it would be this one. My decision was obvious and immediate.

I’m sure my parents winced at the price, whatever it was. It was likely $10-$20 more than the standard, run-of-the-mill bicycle. I’m sure they pointed out to me that the Bicentennial “was only this year” and in their minds, for the money they ‘d be spending, I’d be riding this bicycle until I had children of my own. Still, my parents could not deny the smile on my face and excitement in my eyes, and after my mother informed the shop owner that in no world would she be paying sales tax, she handed him cold hard cash and the bike was mine.

On July 2, 1976, I rode that bike for the first time, and as you can tell from the photo—I looked and felt amazing.

In two days, the Bicentennial would arrive. So close. Notwithstanding, we’re going to jump ahead a bit. As I grew up, almost all my toys and playthings would either be handed down to my brother or younger cousins, or due to wear and tear, ferried to their final resting place via the NYC Department of Sanitation. The only two items spared this fate were my comic books and my 1976 Ross Bicentennial bicycle for the simple reason that they both possessed, different, but enduring value.

While auction prices in the millions were a long ways off, my parents were very aware that comic books grew in value with age. They saw the sticker prices on the bagged Golden and Silver Age books that lined the shelves and walls of the comic book stores I often pleaded with them to take me to. My mother frequently lamented her long-lost copies of Little Lulu while my father “claimed” to have owned the original issues of Superman, Captain Marvel, etc. Plus, I’d collected comic books since age four and continue to do so today.

The bicycle was a slightly different story. By the time I was in sixth grade, like most my of peers, I’d upgraded to a ten-speed. I really don’t remember passing my Ross Bicentennial down to my brother; I have zero recollection of him ever riding it. Instead, it was retired into the basement of our three-family apartment building where it stood alongside our fake Christmas tree and decorations, the only items our landlord allowed us to store.

My bicycle remained there undisturbed for the next two decades as I left Brooklyn for college, then later moved into an apartment, and finally purchased a small condo. My reclaimed comic book collection was easy to store away in closets, my bicycle, not so much.

Throughout those years, each and every time I’d visit my parents, my father would bark, “When are you taking that bike?” My responses would alternate between, “It’s not in your way,” or when I felt like calling his bluff, “Just throw it out if it’s bothering you.” I knew that would never happen. My parents, however, were concerned that their new landlord would steal it or try to sell it, but I was confident the landlord feared my rent-controlled, somewhat unhinged parents enough never to make that mistake.

Still, I could not part with the bike. I doubted it carried much financial value as an antique. There was something about it, a powerful attachment that went beyond nostalgia or sentimentality. I never spent time dwelling on why I kept it; I just knew I didn’t want to part with it.

To my parents’ great joy, as soon as I married and purchased a home, complete with ample storage space, I ferried my bicycle from Brooklyn to New Jersey. For the next decade, it hung from a bicycle bar winch attached to my garage ceiling, kept company by my own children’s bicycles over the winter months. Aside from sparing it a quick, reflective glance when I passed beneath it, I didn’t give the bicycle much thought. That would be until 2015 when I had the good fortune to step away from a two decade-long career at a Fortune 50 company where I’d made little use of my BA in English. Free of my corporate shackles, I decided to return to school to pursue an MFA in Creative Writing.

The final requirements for my thesis would be seventy-five pages of fiction. I assumed I’d write a few short stories, the format I was most familiar; but I soon realized it would be foolish not to work at something long form with mentors and peer workshops at my disposal. The initial concept soon morphed into something more like a novella, three inter-connected short stories centering around the same family, unfolding over several decades.

One of the main tenets of writing is write what you know, so while what I wrote fiction, it was often loosely based on my own experiences. I wanted the first story to take place in the 1970’s. I knew each member of the family of four at the story’s center would be tested. Conflicts that began in this story would thread thru the two to follow. But what 1970s day should I choose? That question was on my mind one afternoon as I returned home from the supermarket, parked the car in the driveway, and carried the groceries into my garage. I glanced up at my bike dangling from the support bar, and silently said to myself, “Oh!” That was all it took. I hurried to my computer. My first story would take place on our nation’s Bicentennial.

On a day when, literally, the entire country would be celebrating, each member of the fictitious Agnello family would find themselves being challenged by a new stage in their lives, questioning their past, struggling with their present, unsure but desperately hopeful for their future. The story coalesced and snowballed quickly. By the time I’d finished the fifteenth page, I realized barely a half-hour of story time had elapsed . The Agnello family hadn’t even left their apartment yet—and I had a long and eventful day in store for them. This wasn’t a story to be contained in two dozen pages. I had a novel on my hands.

After many a revision I completed the novel, and yes, my bicycle does have a brief but critical cameo. One piece to the puzzle remained missing—the title. Titling a story or novel sounds like a simple thing, but it can be an infuriatingly difficult task. I’d considered several uninspiring titles during the revision process. Just when I was at the end of my rope, my initial inspiration once more lit the way. Again, passing thru my garage, I looked up. It was right there all long, the decal still in vibrant color despite decades of aging. All I needed to do was change a few letters. Bicentennial 76 became Brooklyn ’76.

With the novel complete and publication day imminent, I thought the Bicentennial and I were done with each other. Not quite. Writing and publishing a novel is akin to the proverbial tree falling in empty woods. If no one reads your novel, does anyone hear your voice? Writing a novel is just step one. Now I had to sell the book. My book production company rightly advised that I needed to establish an author platform to help promote Brooklyn ’76. Many authors do this with a blog on their website. I was provided website links of similarly situated authors, so I eagerly rushed to my computer to dig in. The first and only blog I attempted to read was titled, “Ten Things I Hate About My Areola.” I knew I needed a new plan.

Shocker—my bicycle provided the plan. Bicentennial memorabilia was the ticket. I’d completed significant research to make sure my novel was authentic to the time. Brooklyn ’76 featured many pieces of Bicentennial memorabilia and references aside from my bicycle. I dove back into my research and was amazed at the sheer amount of items that initially had eluded me. I dug up numerous YouTube videos of Bicentennial celebrations and events stemming from all across the country. This was what my website and author platform, anthonyausiello.com, would share and promote along with news about my novel. I also began, to my wife’s chagrin, to amass my own sizable collection of Bicentennial memorabilia.

My curated list of Bicentennial memorabilia was as long as it was varied: calendars, comic books, magazines, buttons, advertisements, paper weights, coins, tee shirts, newspaper special editions, milk shakes, bedspreads, Pez, balloons, travel guides, sneakers, cars, guns, ice cream, beer cans, collectible glassware, Christmas ornaments, hot pants, make-up, tractors, and even toilet paper and condoms—just to name a few.

Among the many YouTube videos I discovered, my favorites included vintage commercials, newscasts, sitcom clips, and, of course, the Bicentennial Minute. These were short educational segments on the American Revolution, each featuring a different celebrity actor, musician, sports figure, or politician. They were broadcast nightly on CBS from July 4, 1974, until December 31, 1976, but despite over nine-hundred aired episodes, I was only able to excavate fifteen. I later stumbled onto a bound collection of the entire published run of The Bicentennial Times—a monthly newspaper that detailed all the local and national initiatives and projects celebrating the Bicentennial, every issue crammed with monthly updates and amazing photographs. The national archive also provided an endless source of files and official documents to digest.

For the past two years, I’ve shared these incredible bits of memory, media, and memorabilia. One book festival where I was featured requested I prepare and present an overview of the Bicentennial. It’s a lot of information to compress into a one-hour PowerPoint, but I did it. The attendees loved learning about ARBA the Bicentennial Eagle, The American Freedom Train, the National BikeCentennial (seems I may have unconsciously borrowed the title of this essay), the Bicentennial Wagon Train, Operation Sail, and much more. I tried my best to touch on every part of both the preparation and celebration. Some folks would still ask, why the clamor over just one day? Well, it was never about just one day.

If you haven’t noticed, I’ve yet to recount one word about my personal experiences on the Bicentennial. I’m sure my day strongly resembled yours if you were lucky enough to be alive and kicking back then. I’m sure I wore something patriotic, proudly waved a little flag, ate a hot dog, and enjoyed the fireworks. If you are curious what Brooklyn looked and felt like on the Bicentennial, I believe someone wrote a very entertaining book on the subject (wink). Despite having pretty good recall, I think the specifics of my day remain hazy because it was never just about the one day. The Bicentennial was that rare special day where the anticipation of it, the specialness of it, far eclipsed the day itself. To me, the Bicentennial was always about what came before and what it later inspired, and of course, my bicycle.

This is what the Bicentennial Memory Project is all about—collecting the personal stories that bring that incredible year back to life. Not the official history you’d find in textbooks, but the real memories from real people who were there.

We’ve created 13 writing prompts to help spark your memories. You don’t need to be a writer—just someone who remembers 1976 and wants to share what made it special for you.

Your essay can be long or short, polished or rough around the edges. What matters is that it’s yours.

Ready to share your 1976? Send your essay to bicentennialmemoryproject@gmail.com

Don’t worry about making it perfect. We’re not looking for perfection. We’re looking for truth, for heart, for the small moments that add up to something meaningful.

Your story matters because you were there. You lived it, you felt it, and you remember it in a way nobody else does.

The Bicentennial happened to all of us, but it happened to each of us differently. That’s what makes this collection so special—and why we need your voice in it too.

What do you remember about 1976? We’re waiting to hear from you.

The memories keep coming in, and they keep surprising us. From snowball fights on hills that doubled as basketball courts to first sips of wine from a grandfather’s oak barrel, readers are sharing the 1976 moments that shaped them. Some memories are small and personal. Others connect to events that shook an entire industry.

This story has both. And it starts with a dusting of snow on a driveway in San Mateo County.

Our newest contributor with the grew up on the San Francisco peninsula, where snow was about as common as a cold day in July. But on February 5, 1976, his mother pulled up the blinds and announced the impossible. What followed was a day of saucer rides down the driveway hill, snowball fights with neighbors and strangers, and the kind of joy that only comes when the ordinary world turns upside down.

But the snow day was just the opening chapter. Something was happening in 1976 that would one day bring his grandfather into the spotlight. On May 24, a British wine merchant named Steven Spurrier organized a blind tasting in Paris to honor America’s Bicentennial. Nine French judges did the unthinkable…..read on for the full story.

I grew up on the San Francisco peninsula, known for its famous cable cars, scenic views of the Golden Gate Bridge, and mild climate. It’s middle latitude location on the California coast places the region into a Mediterranean climate zone. That means moist, mild winters and dry summers.

Since downtown San Francisco is at sea level, it’s wildly uncommon for it to be blanketed by widespread snowfall. That is, except on February 5, 1976. I had just turned four.

When I woke up, I gauged how big a deal it was from the tenor in my mom’s voice.

“There’s snow outside, boys!” She was raising the shades on our Venetian blinds.

My eyes popped open as I laid on my lower roll-out trundle bed. My older brother, Mike, on the top bunk questioned what all the fuss was about.

Our bedroom window peered out onto our driveway-basketball court. No hoops today. The court was covered with snow. For once, I would discover the benefit of living on a hill. Our driveway slanted down just beyond our free throw line, which became our excitement for the day, sliding on a saucer down the hill with our neighbors.

Our hilly street became more popular with the older neighborhood kids once word got out that school was officially canceled. We also waged snowball fights with neighbors and strangers alike.

It snowed about one to two inches at sea level that day and as much as five inches in San Francisco’s Twin Peaks area (elevation: just under 1,000 feet) as well as elevated parts of San Mateo County, where we lived.

My First Forklift Ride

About a year earlier, I got my first ride on a forklift at the Gemello Winery, run by my grandfather Mario Gemello in Mountain View. My childhood was filled with playing hide-n-seek near the winery or climbing trees and chasing my cousins in the nearby orchard.

One or two years after the bicentennial, Grandpa Mario gave me my first sip of wine from one of his oak barrels, letting me stick my tongue under the spigot. I was expecting the sweetness of grape juice. It wasn’t quite that. My nose turned up as he laughed.

Judgment of Paris

On May 24, 1976, a blind tasting was held that would become a cultural turning point for the California wine industry. British wine merchant Steven Spurrier paired wines of California and France, seven of each, which would become known as the Judgment of Paris. The event was held in honor of America’s bicentennial, and it would foreshadow a big event for my family years later.

Initially, Spurrier questioned the bicentennial marketing idea proposed by his American business partner, Patricia Gallagher. She pressed on: “It’s a big deal!”

“Is it? We don’t celebrate American Independence in England, having lost the war,” Spurrier told her.

Nevertheless, he went along with it, needing a marketing hook.

Not only was the Bicentennial a big deal, so was Spurrier’s blind tasting. Nine French wine judges did the unthinkable: unknowingly picked two California wines (Chateau Montelena and Stag’s Leap) over France’s most elite bottles. It sent shockwaves through the industry when Time magazine published the results.

Judgment Rematch

That event wasn’t without controversy. Many in the French wine community argued “they were robbed” in the Judgment of Paris and tried to denounce the legitimacy of the event. So 25 years later, a rematch was set and yet another shocker: California won again, but this time it was my grandfather’s 1970 Gemello Cabernet. It didn’t just win, it nearly swept the tasting.

Grandpa Mario was stunned when he heard the news. He was 82, battling cancer and long retired after 48 years of making Gemello Wine when the media started calling for his reaction.

The 1970 Cabernet was one of the best vintages he had ever made, perhaps only second to his 1960 Cabernet, wrote Ray Isle in Wine and Sprits magazine, where he was managing editor at the time. (Isle is now executive editor of Food & Wine).

One of the judges, Eric Asimov, would write in the New York Times a few years later, that the Gemello Cabernet was “both obscure and legendary.”

Winning the Judgment of Paris rematch was a proud memory for my grandfather, who died of prostate cancer in 2005.

About two weeks before his death, I sat with him at Mountain View’s El Camino Hospital for his last round of radiation. He asked me to bring him the Wine & Spirits article. He wanted to read it one more time.

Your Turn

• Did your family have a connection to a local business or family trade in 1976? Maybe a farm, a shop, a restaurant, or a workshop that’s part of your story?

• Was there a day the weather did something so unexpected you still remember exactly where you were?

Write your stories and share them here (and with friends and family too!).

Did You Know?

• It snowed in San Francisco on February 5, 1976—one to two inches at sea level and up to five inches at higher elevations. School was canceled across the area.

• The Judgment of Paris was a Bicentennial marketing idea. Steven Spurrier’s American business partner pushed for it. Spurrier resisted: “We don’t celebrate American Independence in England, having lost the war.”

• A two-dollar bill was reintroduced on April 13, 1976—Thomas Jefferson’s birthday—as part of the Bicentennial celebration. Many people saved them and never spent them. You can walk into the U.S. Treasury building in Washington D.C. and buy uncut sheets of $2 bills today (or order online).

In 115 days, America turns 250. Before it does, your stories deserve to be written down.

Have a 1976 memory to share? Send your story to bicentennialmemoryproject@gmail.com. We’d love to hear what that year meant to you.

It’s the evening of December 1, 1969. CBS pre-empts Mayberry RFD for a live feed from Selective Service headquarters in Washington. Roger Mudd whispers into the camera as the ceremony begins behind him. In living rooms and dorm lounges across the country, men between 18 and 26 lean forward. Their mothers grip the arms of their chairs.

A large glass container sits on a table. Inside it: 366 blue plastic capsules, each holding a date. Congressman Alexander Pirnie reaches in, pulls one out, opens it.

September 14.

Every man born on September 14, from 1944 to 1950, is now number one. First called. First to go.

The room keeps drawing. April 24. December 30. February 14. In college dorms, guys watch their futures get decided by the order a hand pulls plastic out of glass. One junior later remembered: “My number came up quickly. I knew that from that moment on, my life’s highest priority was dealing with the draft and the Vietnam War.”

The low numbers meant almost certain induction. The high numbers meant relief so intense it felt like guilt. The middle numbers meant months of not knowing.

In a Dallas family room, three brothers watched together. In a Duke University dorm, a hundred residents threw in a dollar each, the lowest number drawn wins the pot. The winner collected his hundred bucks and went to the recruitment office the next day.

And in kitchens all over the country, mothers who had been keeping quiet all evening did the math on their sons’ birthdays and either exhaled or started making phone calls.

The lottery ran every year from 1969 to 1975. The last men actually drafted were those born in 1952 (number 95 was the cutoff). After that, the numbers were still drawn but never used. The draft itself ended in 1973. And then, quietly, on January 27, 1976 — almost exactly fifty years ago — the Selective Service stopped processing registrants altogether.

The machinery that had fed 2.7 million Americans into Vietnam simply stopped.

But the damage didn’t stop with it.

By the Bicentennial year, most veterans had been home for a while. Not that “home” felt like the right word. Unlike World War II, where entire units shipped back together over weeks, Vietnam veterans went from jungle to living room in 48 hours. One day you’re in combat. Two days later you’re standing in your parents’ kitchen and nobody knows what to say to you.

The reception wasn’t always hostile. A 1971 poll found only 1% of returning veterans described their homecoming as “unfriendly.” But the most common experience wasn’t hostility. It was avoiding the topic of the Vietnam War all together. People looked away. Changed the subject. Didn’t ask.

One veteran said it plainly: “There has really never been anyone who has asked me: ‘What happened to you over there? What was it like?’ It’s like having a whole year of your life that didn’t exist.”

By 1976, the country was trying to figure out what to do with all of it. Ford had offered conditional amnesty to draft evaders in September 1974 (two years of public service in exchange for a clean slate). Only about 19% of those eligible even applied. The program was declared a failure. Jimmy Carter was campaigning on a promise of unconditional pardons. The VFW called it disgraceful. The men who’d gone to Canada called Ford’s offer a sham. The men who’d served called all of it an insult.

And somewhere in the middle of this unresolved argument, America was supposed to throw itself a 200th birthday party.

That’s the tension that makes the Bicentennial remarkable. The people alive then felt it and lived it, and this publication is here to collect those memories.

Did You Know?

• The 1969 lottery capsules weren’t properly mixed. Later-in-the-year birthdays were disproportionately drawn early, meaning men born in November and December were more likely to get low numbers. A court challenge was filed. The results stood anyway.

• An estimated 100,000 men fled to Canada to avoid the draft. Thousands more went to Sweden, France, and the U.K. Many built entire lives abroad — married, had children, bought houses. Some never came back.

• Ron Kovic published Born on the Fourth of July in 1976 — the memoir of a paralyzed Marine veteran, released during the Bicentennial year. The title wasn’t metaphorical. He was literally born on July 4, 1946.

• Ford’s clemency board was chaired by Charles Goodell — a former Republican senator from New York. His son, Roger Goodell, is the current commissioner of the NFL.

Your Memories

Were you old enough to watch a draft lottery on TV? Do you remember whose birthday came up—yours, your brother’s, your boyfriend’s? What happened next in your family?

If you served, what was it like coming home to a country getting ready to celebrate its 200th birthday?

Tell us: bicentennialmemoryproject@gmail.com

In 118 days, America turns 250. It’s time to share our stories of 1976.

Two weeks after America officially celebrated her 200^th birthday on July 4, 1976, the summer Olympics were held across the border in Montreal, Canada. I was 14, and pretty sure the games were just an international extension of the Bicentennial, at least that’s how it felt at the time.

The red, white, and blue outfits on the athletes as they walked through the Olympic village trading pins and letting the wind blow thru their hair. Every one of them looked like they belonged in an Herbal Essence shampoo commercial, and Bruce Jenner was the undisputed star of the show

The American flags everywhere. The Star Spangled Banner, the Hometown Heros, the fireworks and eagles, the all-this-is-bigger-than-us-ness of it all.

I didn’t grow up in a sporty family, well unless you counted hunting, fishing and snowmobiling, but for the two weeks of the Olympics, my sister and I and my folks were glued to ABC’s Wide World of Sports.

“Spanning the globe to bring you the constant variety of sport... the thrill of victory... and the agony of defeat... the human drama of athletic competition.”

We watched it all. Track and Field, Swimming with John Naber, Boxing with Sugar Ray and Gymnastics with Bart Connor and Nadia Comaneci – who wasn’t an America, of course, but wasn’t she amazing!

My family approached the Games that summer the same we did the Miss America Beauty pageant – we’d pick early favorites and then keep track of who won. We maybe weren’t athletic, but we sure were competitive.

When we weren’t watching the Olympics, we were talking about them with our friends. Usually while lying on the beach, our bodies slathered in Johnson’s baby oil + iodine and our hair sprayed with lemon water. Middle school gossip had it that all the East German women were taking male hormones and secretly shaved every morning before competition (true), and the Soviet bloc gymnasts were taking puberty blockers so their boobs didn’t get in the way (rumor).

At 14, it made perfect sense. It would be another four years before Ronald Reagan called the Soviet Union the “Evil Empire”, but even in 1976, even as a kid who wasn’t sure where the USSR was exactly, I knew they were the bad guys, they didn’t play fair. The opposite of us. And by us, I meant US, as in US of A. My Country Tis of Thee.

John McKay had said as much on TV.

Other than marching in a bunch of parades and collecting state stickers from Gulf gas stations, I didn’t participate in a lot of Bicentennial events. Our little town didn’t host any ox carts or masted ships, the Freedom Train that carried a real moon rock and George Washington’s copy of the US Constitution didn’t stop by and President Ford didn’t open any Century Safes.

But the Olympics. They were real. For two weeks in the summer of 1976, they showed up every night in my house. They made me cheer and clap and even tear up a few times, and they got me excited about being American. Part of something bigger, greater, stronger, faster.

America won 94 medals in Montreal, finishing third behind the Soviet Union and East Germany. I had to look that up, because in my memory, we were the winners. Bruce and Connor and John, Jennifer Chandler and Edwin Moses, Phil Boggs, Shirley Babashoff and me. Little old me. Sitting on the couch next to Dad, sharing a bowl of popcorn, putting my hand over my heart every time the National Anthem was played, talking about world class athletes like we were best friends.

Celebrating America. My America.

The Olympics are on my mind tonight as I write this. The ones held in 1976, and the Winter 2026 ones going on right now in Milan, Italy. My daughter and I were fortunate enough to get tickets, and we’ve been soaking up every second of our time here. I bought a sweater with a big American flag on the front and a USA Hockey jersey I’ll be wearing to the arena a bit later, and I have a pocket full of American flag trading pins, just in case.

It’s America’s 250th at the Olympics. And I couldn’t be more proud to celebrate my country.

This is what the Bicentennial Memory Project is all about—collecting the personal stories that bring that incredible year back to life. Not the official history you’d find in textbooks, but the real memories from real people who were there.

We’ve created 13 writing prompts to help spark your memories. You don’t need to be a writer—just someone who remembers 1976 and wants to share what made it special for you.

Your essay can be long or short, polished or rough around the edges. What matters is that it’s yours.

Ready to share your 1976? Send your essay to bicentennialmemoryproject@gmail.com

Don’t worry about making it perfect. We’re not looking for perfection. We’re looking for truth, for heart, for the small moments that add up to something meaningful.

Your story matters because you were there. You lived it, you felt it, and you remember it in a way nobody else does.

The Bicentennial happened to all of us, but it happened to each of us differently. That’s what makes this collection so special—and why we need your voice in it too.

What do you remember about 1976? We’re waiting to hear from you.

Some stories make us laugh, others make us proud, and a few—like Robin R. Foster’s—make us pause and think deeper about what the Bicentennial really meant. Every submission reminds us that America’s 200th birthday looked different depending on where you stood and who you were.

We’re honored you’re trusting us with these pieces of your life, and we can’t wait to read yours too.

Robin Foster didn’t ask for permission. She didn’t seek her teacher’s advice or consult her parents about which Revolutionary figure to embody for her 1976 school project.

While her Catholic school classmates chose George Washington and Betsy Ross, Robin knew she needed someone different. Someone who looked like her and said you matter even when the world says otherwise.

She chose Phillis Wheatley—an enslaved African girl who became a poet when people like her weren’t even taught to read.

It was the Bicentennial year—1976—and I was 11 years old, a student in a Catholic parochial school where patriotism and reverence walked hand in hand. Our classroom buzzed with talk of revolution and independence. The teacher gave us a powerful assignment: Choose someone from 1776 to model yourself after.

While many of my classmates gravitated to the usual heroes—George Washington with his valor or Betsy Ross with her needle and flag—I knew, even then, that I had to choose someone who represented something deeper. Someone who looked like me. Someone whose life said you matter even when the world says otherwise. I had been reading about a young girl named Phillis Wheatley, and something in my spirit said, Choose her.

I didn’t ask my teacher’s advice. I didn’t ask my father, who was wise, or my mother, who was loving and strong. I didn’t ask anyone. Because—truth be told— who would have helped me back then? Who would have pointed me to an enslaved Black girl who became a poet when most people like her weren’t even taught to read?

No, I was guided by something higher. It was the Spirit—the one that comes to every man, woman, boy, and girl when they are quiet enough to hear. That same Spirit that whispered truth to Phillis Wheatley in the 18th century whispered to me in 1976: She is the one.

And so, I stood before my class, dressed in period clothes—a handmade bonnet, a modest colonial blouse and skirt, a white cardboard scroll in hand—and I became Phillis Wheatley for a day. I had memorized one of her poems. I didn’t just perform; I embodied her. I felt special—not with the pride that puffs up, but with the knowing that something ancient, something eternal, had passed through me.

I didn’t know then that she had been taken from Africa, enslaved, her humanity questioned. I didn’t fully understand the weight she carried, only that her words were full of light. They were spiritual, just like the words I would one day write. I didn’t know what I was stepping into—but the Spirit did.

And now, looking back, I know this: I wasn’t just choosing a historical figure. I was being called into a lineage. A writer’s lineage. A spiritual lineage. A truth-teller’s lineage.

I chose Phillis Wheatley at 11 years old. But in many ways, she chose me, too.

Looking back now, Robin understands what that moment really was. She wasn’t just completing a school assignment or choosing a historical figure.

She was being called into a lineage. A writer’s lineage, a spiritual lineage, a truth-teller’s lineage.

“I chose Phillis Wheatley at 11 years old,” she reflects. “But in many ways, she chose me, too.”

This is the power of the Bicentennial memories we’re collecting—they’re not just about fireworks and parades. They’re about the moments that shaped who we became.

What did the Bicentennial mean to you? We’ve created 13 writing prompts to help you explore your own 1976 memories. and send your story to bicentennialmemoryproject@gmail.com

Your experience matters. Your truth matters. Just like Robin’s choice in 1976—it’s part of the bigger story we’re all still writing together.

From Air Force Academy graduations to backyard barbecues, from school pageants to cross-country road trips, readers have been sharing what 1976 meant to them. Each story captures something unique about that extraordinary year when America threw itself the biggest birthday party in history.

Now it’s time to read what your fellow Americans remember and to add your own voice to this growing collection.

’s journey began three years before the Bicentennial, when he stepped across a painted line in Colorado. As an 18-year-old at the U.S. Air Force Academy, he didn’t know he was joining “The Spirit of ‘76”.

Steve’s story reminds us that 1976 wasn’t just about fireworks and tall ships. It was about pride, possibility, and believing America’s best days were still ahead.

Fifty-three years ago, on 3 July 1972, I stepped off a chartered shuttle bus about twenty minutes north of Colorado Springs, Colorado. I waited while the cargo bay underneath was opened to retrieve my one allowed piece of luggage.

With bag in hand, looking up to the futuristic glass-and-steel building in front of me, I took a breath probably not unlike that of a prisoner inhaling his last whiff of freedom. I stepped across the temporary line on the pavement that demarcated civilian/military and into my new life as an 18-year old Basic Cadet at the U.S. Air Force Academy.

One thousand, four hundred and thirty-one days later (which were counted down every single day), I threw my hat high as part of the 18th class to graduate from the Air Force Academy since the first in 1959.

That’s me, actually, from our yearbook.

Had we been any other class, we would’ve been the Class of 1976.

However, given that we were graduating in the Bicentennial year of our nation’s declaration of independence, we weren’t just another class of the current year.

From Day 1, after stepping over that line, getting our heads shaved, and learning how to form up in our elements, flights, and squadrons, we were The Spirit of ‘76.

This was no accidental brag grab. In the Academy Superintendent’s letter to parents three weeks later, he wrote:

“Since your son’s childhood, the “Spirit of ‘76“ has probably been viewed by him as the time of excitement, enthusiasm and hope which accompanied the challenges facing our country nearly two hundred years ago. Today, he is living this “Spirit.” It has become particularly relevant for him now, as it represents a pride and an esprit which mark the attitude of the Class.”

The previous seventeen Academy classes each chose a Latin or Greek phrase as its class motto, most notably found inscribed on their class rings. But our class would have no Ignotum Vincere (“to conquer the unknown”) or Pax In Tempore Nostra (”Peace in Our Time”).

Not the Spirit of ‘76. No translation required for our ring.

So yeah, I have some memories of the Bicentennial period. This is just the start. I’m looking forward to it.

Again.

This is what the Bicentennial Memory Project is all about—collecting the personal stories that bring that incredible year back to life. Not the official history you’d find in textbooks, but the real memories from real people who were there.

We’ve created 13 writing prompts to help spark your memories. You don’t need to be a writer—just someone who remembers 1976 and wants to share what made it special for you.

Your essay can be long or short, polished or rough around the edges. What matters is that it’s yours.

Ready to share your 1976? Send your essay to bicentennialmemoryproject@gmail.com

Don’t worry about making it perfect. We’re not looking for perfection. We’re looking for truth, for heart, for the small moments that add up to something meaningful.

Your story matters because you were there. You lived it, you felt it, and you remember it in a way nobody else does.

The Bicentennial happened to all of us, but it happened to each of us differently. That’s what makes this collection so special—and why we need your voice in it too.

What do you remember about 1976? We’re waiting to hear from you.

Release date: December, 21, 2025

Welcome to the Bicentennial Memory Project, where we revisit the stories and moments of America’s 200th birthday, and help you capture your own.

The Christmas of 1975 was popping with anticipation for both the season and the coming Bicentennial. At the White House, President and First Lady Betty Ford decorated the trees with the help of volunteers from the Colonial Williamsburg, a nod to the celebrations coming in 1976.

Across America, children paged through Christmas catalogs, earmarking pages and circling items for their wishlist with No. 2 yellow pencils.

And families gathered around their console TV to enjoy the sounds of the season, some good clean jokes and the chance to put America’s turmoil aside, at least for a moment.

Join us as we revisit Christmas 1975, and get ready to reminisce!

What’s Inside

Christmas 1975

• The White House Christmas Decorations

• Crooners for Christmas

• Catalogs and Christmas lists

Bicentennial Memories

• Betty Ford’s Cranberry Tree

• A Battle over the 1st event of the Bicentennial

• Thornton Wilder’s “The Long Christmas Dinner”

What’s Ahead

• Bicentennial Memory Project and America’s 250th Celebration

Christmas 1975

The White House Christmas Decorations

On the eve of America’s Bicentennial, America’s First Lady, Betty Ford, chose “An Old-Fashioned Christmas in America” theme that emphasized Americana and traditional craftsmanship.

Here’s a little known tidbit from the Gerald Ford Library Museum: Many of the ornaments and decorations on which adorned the 20-foot fir tree in the Blue Room were actually created by Colonial Williamsburg staff members, and some were even recycled, having been displayed the previous Christmas on the Folk Art Museum’s folk art tree.

But, it turns out the Blue Room tree was much bigger than the one the museum had decorated in 1974, so much bigger, in fact, that an addition 1,500 ornaments were needed. Thus, Beatrix Rumford, Director of the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Collection reached out to employees for help:

However, since the White House tree will be two and a half times larger than the Folk Art tree, Trix estimates that she still needs 1500 items, and would like to invite CW employees to contribute simple ornaments of the same quality of craftsmanship displayed at the museum last year. All handmade, each item should measure between 3” and 6”. The idea is to be as original and imaginative as possible in using “bits and pieces” found in home sewing baskets, or by combining such materials as nuts, wood, corn husks, yarn, and wire. A traditional old- fashioned feeling is preserved since no foil, sequins, or glitter is used.-2-

All employees, male and female, are urged to make a few things and donate them for use on the White House tree. New ideas are encouraged, but those who would like to refresh their memories as to what was used last year are invited to see the display boards set up in the AARFAC basement/office area on weekdays between noon and 5:00 p.m. Catherine Gibbons (ext. 2423) will be in charge of the display boards showing last year’s decorations and for collecting new ones.

The result was a beautiful and one-of-a-kind tree which was enjoyed and viewed by thousands of visitors and special guests during the busy 1975 holiday season, and which influenced unknown other holiday decorations in 1975 and years to come.

Crooners for Christmas

Christmas was all about the Crooners in 1975, and the older the better. Seventy-two-year-old Bob Hope had been hosting TV Christmas specials on and off since 1953, but in ’75 his magical mix of comedy, music, celebrity and sports became an annual holiday tradition that lasted until 1994. Guests that first year included musical sensations Donny & Marie Osmond, plus funnymen Redd Foxx, Don Knotts and Rowan & Martin. Also on hand were members of the 1975 AP all-American Football Team and the full Tournament of Roses Court.

“Merry Christmas, Fred, from the Crosby’s” featured 72-year-old crooner Bing Crosby and 76-year-old dancer Fred Astaire, plus a full complement of family members who sang, danced and shared stories in a wholesome hour of American nostalgia that recognized one of the great talents of the day.

Other musical variety Christmas specials that aired in December 1975 were hosted by relative youngsters, including Dean Martin (58), Mac Davis (33) and John Denver (32), the last of whom was promoting his first Christmas album, and setting hearts a flutter with his guitar, rimless glasses and wistful lyrics.

And speaking of holiday TV specials, who can forget marking the calendar with the times and dates for the once-a-year showings of classics like Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, Frosty the Snowman and The Little Drummer Boy. It was the age of stop motion animation and family television watching!

Memory prompts

• Do you remember watching Christmas television specials with your family?
  Where were you sitting, who controlled the volume or the channel, and what made the night feel different from an ordinary evening?

• Which performers made Christmas feel official to you? Think about voices, faces, or personalities that signaled the holiday had truly arrived.

• How did television shape the rhythm of your Christmas season? Were there programs you planned around, talked about the next day, or only saw once but never forgot?

• Looking back, what do you remember more clearly—the shows themselves, or the people you watched them with? Is there one detail that fixes that memory in place?

Catalogs and Christmas lists

A great oral history video on the history of Christmas catalogs and how they built anticipation for Christmas in a way nothing else could or ever would again. IFKYK.

Christmas list making changed forever when the very first Christmas catalog came out. Sears published it, and all 78 pages were dedicated to toys and gifts. Kids almost immediately started calling it the “Wish Book,” and in 1968, the company conceded and began calling it that, too. Other catalog merchants got in on the action, including giants Montgomery Ward and JCPenny, as well as niche sellers like Neiman Marcus and others.

Whether you got your Christmas catalog in the mail or picked it up at the store, the joy and wonder was real.

If you’re really interested in reliving Christmas 1975 page-by-glorious-page, take a walk down Memory Lane with these complete digital holiday wish books:

• JCPenny Christmas Book

• Montgomery Ward Christmas Book

• Sears Christmas Book

Top New Gifts for 1975

Although kids still adored the classics - Lincoln Logs, Barbie dolls and Mickey Mouse - in 1975, toy merchants were excited about some newcomers to the toy scene including “boy dolls made for boys”, TV spinoff toys and kids’ craft sets.

Among the most popular new gifts for the season were:

• Six Million Dollar Man dolls with bionic limbs and body-repair stations

• Sesame Street replicas with buildings, street scenes, a soda fountain and newsstand and all the best characters, Cookie Monster, Big Bird, Oscar and Grouch.

• Star Trek dolls including Captain kirk, Spock and Dr. Mccoy

• Baby Alive, Baby That Away and Baby Tender Love dolls that required real TLC

• Lego Bricks used to build “homes, barns, boats, ships, or anything else a child thinks of.”

• Jewel Magic boxes that contained everything needed to make beaded belts and bracelets

• Fisher-Price’s Safari sets with people and exotic animals, sleeping tents and safari trucks

• Completely workable shoeshine kits

• Tricycles with Good Humor vending boxes and plastic ice cream cones

• Olympic-themed doll clothes including “parade wear, hockey uniforms and track suits”

• Growing Up Skipper dolls who “could be any 11-year-old until you rotate her arms, then, like magic, she increases in height, acquires a more slender waist and a bustline.”

• And all things Holly Hobby, from rag dolls and patchwork dresses to “craft sets for framing her picture or doing her decoupage.” ¹

Did any of these new toys find their way under the tree at your house?

Roller skates were apparently a big hit with kids of all ages in 1975 too, at least in Baltimore, MD.

And kids weren’t the only ones with Christmas wishes! Oh my!

Memory prompts

• Do you remember when the Christmas catalogs arrived? Where did you first see them—in the mailbox, on the floor by the door, stacked on a table, at the store —and who claimed them first?

• Was there a gift you studied over and over in those catalogs? Describe the picture, the page it appeared on, and what made it feel impossibly important.

• How did you use catalogs to imagine Christmas before it arrived? Circling items, dog-eared pages, wish lists written and rewritten—what did anticipation look like in your house?

• Do you remember needing to choose just one thing to ask for? What went into that decision, and how did it feel to narrow your hopes to a single page or picture?

• Looking back, what stays with you more—the gift you received, or the waiting? Is there one small moment from that long December stretch that still feels vivid.

Bicentennial Memories

A new kind of tree at the White House

The White House Christmas 1975 decorations included a new tradition, a cranberry tree, and it was front and center in the Red Room. It was also quite the attention-getter, at least according to Ann G. Kindness, wife of Eighth District Ohio Congressman Thomas N. Kindness, who attended the White House Christmas Ball in 1975, and shared her experience in the local Sidney Daily News.

“We have, like most of you, gone to our share of lovely holiday parties,” she wrote, “but when an engrave invitation arrived inviting us to The White House Christmas Ball – well – that was really something special.”

After being greeted on arrival by costumed carolers, Ann joined other congressional wives on a personal tour of the beautifully decorated Presidential residence.

“On the second floor, the spectacular Christmas tree in the blue room dominated the holiday décor. The three, a thirty foot spruce from Pennsylvania, was decorated with old-fashioned ornaments from Williamsburg, VA: stuffed gingham toys, real gingerbread men, carved wooden figures, cornhusk dolls, strings of popcorn and tiny lights. We marveled at the perfect symmetry of the tree; somehow ours are never quite straight or quite even.”

But the tree that got the most oohs and aahs was in the Red Room.

“The Red Room featured a charming cranberry tree, which I and a number of the other wives inspected closely for future use. The base was a two-foot Styrofoam cone which was closely covered with cranberries. The berries were attached with toothpicks, and the whole tree was set on a silver compote, surrounded with sprigs of holly.”

In the East Room, which had been converted into a small ballroom, Ann was taken by the refreshments, which had been arranged on long tables covered with patchwork cloths, and included, “several kinds of punch, tiny sausages, roast beef tidbits with small rounds of bread, assorted cheeses and relishes.”

“We were amused to see some of the people who were in charge of serving at these tables nibbling now and then on the snacks,” she added. “I’ve always told our children that they are not to nibble when helping me serve at parties, but if it’s acceptable in the White House, I guess I shouldn’t mind.” ²

Memory prompts

• Do you remember a holiday decoration that stopped you in your tracks the first time you saw it? What made it feel special, unexpected, or worth remembering years later?

• What holiday traditions or decorations did you quietly “inspect” for future use?
  Think about ideas you carried home from someone else’s house, church, store window, or party.

• How did your family’s Christmas trees compare to the “perfect” ones you saw elsewhere? What do you remember about the way yours leaned, sagged, or never quite turned out as planned?

• What foods do you associate with holiday parties rather than holiday meals? Small bites, punch, finger foods—what was always on the table, and who hovered near it?

• Do you remember a moment when adult rules softened during the holidays? An exception, shared amusement, or quiet indulgence that told you it really was Christmas.

A Battle over the 1st event of the Bicentennial

As 1975 was drawing to a close, an unexpected coast-to-coast battle was raging over which event would hold the honor of being the very first to celebrate America’s 200th birthday. Would it be the Liberty Bowl, the Mummers Parade, the Cotton Bowl or the Rose Parade?

The answer, it seems, depending on who you asked. ³

What was the first Bicentennial event you watched or participated in?

Thornton Wilder’s “The Long Christmas Dinner”

In 1931, American playwright and novelist Thornton Wilder wrote a one-act play titled “The Long Christmas Dinner.” The play follows one family, the Bayards, as they celebrate Christmas dinner over the span of ninety years, and as family historians and storytellers, it seems the perfect way to end this look back at Christmas 1975.

Thornton Wilder passed away on December 7, 1975. He was 78.

What’s Ahead

Thanks for joining us for this holiday look back at the events and moments of Christmas 1975. Everything we do here is meant to spark your own memories of America’s Bicentennial—and we’d love to hear what this issue brought back for you. Share a comment and add your story to the archive.

Happy Christmas! And we look forward to celebrating America’s 250th birthday with you in the coming year.

Leave a comment

End Notes

¹ Boy Dolls all the Rage,” Democrat and Chronicle, Rochester, NY, November 27, 1975, P. L2.

² “Kindnesses memorable evening at White House Ball, Sidney Daily News, Sidney, OH, December 24, 1975, P. 4.

³ John Brannon Albright, “Who’s on First for the Bicentennial”, New York Times, New York, NY, December 28, 1975, P. 3.

Welcome to the Bicentennial Memory Project, where we revisit the stories and moments of America’s 200th birthday, and help you capture your own.

In our special holiday issue we show you what life was like in America and the preparations for the Bicentennial celebrations.

So let’s step into December 1975….

What’s Inside

Life in America in December 1975

• When bombs were background noise and a president was targeted

Holiday Celebrations in 1975

• The night Hanukkah stepped out of the house and into the public square

Bicentennial Memory

• When America got ready to throw itself a 200th birthday party

What’s Ahead

• Holiday parades and Christmas at the White House 1975

Life in America in December 1975

When bombs were background noise and the president was targeted

December 1975 was a month when Americans were learning to live with a new kind of everyday terror. The FBI recorded 149 terrorist incidents that year. Twenty-four people died. Another 158 were injured. That’s one attack every two or three days, most of them bombings.

The deadliest came on December 29 at LaGuardia Airport. A bomb hidden in a coin locker tore through the baggage claim area at 6:33 PM, killing eleven people and injuring seventy-five more. It ripped a hole in the reinforced concrete ceiling. Metal fragments flew across the room. Investigators suspected Croatian nationalists, but nobody ever claimed responsibility. The case is still open a quarter century later.

That same month, another bomb injured a New York police officer and cost him an eye. The FALN—Puerto Rican separatists—set that one off in East Harlem. They’d already killed four people at Fraunces Tavern in January and kept bombing through the year. The Weather Underground, a left-wing Marxist military organization, hit the State Department in January. Another left-wing terrorist group, the New World Liberation Front, was hitting Pacific Gas and Electric towers in the Bay Area. Twenty-two bombings in California alone that year, credited to one group.

And President Ford? He’d survived two assassination attempts in seventeen days that September. Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme pointed a gun at him in Sacramento on September 5. on September 5. The weapon clicked but didn’t fire—she hadn’t chambered a round. Then Sara Jane Moore fired at him in San Francisco on September 22. A bystander grabbed her arm. The bullet missed Ford’s head by five inches.

Fromme was convicted of attempted assassination of the president and sentenced to life in prison. She was pardoned on August 14, 2009 after serving 34 years.

Moore plead guilty of attempting to assassinate of the president and was also sentenced to life in prison. Thirty-two years later, on December 31, 2007, she was paroled.

By New Year’s Eve, Americans were ready to close the books on 1975 and were hoping for something better. Many believed that something could be the Bicentennial.

Holiday Celebrations in 1975

The night Hanukkah stepped out of the house and into the public square

Something shifted in December 1975 that most people didn’t notice at the time. Hanukkah began at sundown on November 28 that year and ran through December 6. For generations, it had been a private celebration—families lighting menorahs at home, children playing dreidel in living rooms, stories told at kitchen tables.

But on that first night of Hanukkah in San Francisco’s Union Square, more than 1,000 people gathered on a blustery evening to watch something new. A 25-foot menorah. Public. Sponsored by rock promoter Bill Graham and organized by two Chabad-Lubavitch rabbis, Chaim Drizin and Yosef Langer. It was the first grand public menorah lighting in modern history.

That moment in Union Square started something. By 2019, approximately 15,000 large public menorahs were being lit in public squares, government buildings, and sports arenas across more than 100 countries. The menorah from that first night in 1975 is still there each year, renamed the Bill Graham Menorah Project after Graham died in 1991. Tens of thousands show up.

The same weekend, in Providence, Rhode Island, Lenny Kordick carried a Hanukkah torch from T.F. Green Airport to the Jewish Community Center, where runners lit a menorah together. Small moments in different cities, Jewish communities making the same choice—to step into public space and say, here we are.

This wasn’t about making Hanukkah compete with Christmas. It was about visibility. About claiming a place in the American public square during the holiday season. About showing up. What started in San Francisco in December 1975 became a tradition that spread worldwide. The miracle wasn’t just the oil that burned for eight days in ancient Jerusalem. It was watching a private family celebration become a public statement of identity and belonging.

Memory prompts

• Do you remember the first time you saw a religious or family tradition move into a public space? Where were you, and what made the moment feel surprising—or quietly meaningful?

• What traditions in your childhood were practiced mostly at home and rarely talked about outside the family? How did that privacy shape your connection to them?

• Was there a moment when you realized that something you thought was “just for us” was actually shared by many others? Describe how that realization changed your sense of belonging.

• Over the years, which traditions have stayed small and personal for you—and which have grown more public or communal? What do you think each version gave you?

Bicentennial Memories

When America got ready to throw itself a 200th birthday party

December 1975 was the countdown month. The Bicentennial was coming. You could feel the anticipation building as the country prepared to celebrate its 200th anniversary.

On December 31, at midnight, the Liberty Bell would move from Independence Hall to a brand-new glass-and-steel pavilion across the street on Independence Mall. Philadelphia was expecting 50,000 people to show up for the event. The Army Chorus would perform. Actor Lee J. Cobb would recite a poem. The United States Old Guard Fife and Drum Corps would escort the 2,000-pound bell on a large blue-and-white cart for its 100-yard journey. Philadelphia was expecting 20 million visitors during the Bicentennial year. They needed a pavilion that could handle the crowds.

Earlier that month, Americans learned they’d be able to buy official National Bicentennial medals starting January 1. The U.S. Mint would strike them in seven versions, ranging from $5 bronze medals to a three-inch gold medal priced at $4,000. That gold version would be the first gold medal in U.S. history specifically authorized by Congress for public sale. Each large gold medal would be individually numbered and made to order.

The medals featured the Statue of Liberty on one side and the Great Seal on the other. Designed by Frank Gasparro, the U.S. Mint’s chief engraver, they’d only be available to people whose orders were postmarked between January 1 and July 31, 1976. Five medals maximum per order.

These weren’t just commemorative tchotchkes. They were pieces of a moment when America was trying to remember what it stood for. After Vietnam, after Watergate, after a year of bombings and assassination attempts, the Bicentennial was a chance to look back 200 years and ask if the experiment was still working. Come January 1, Americans would find out if enough people still believed the answer was yes.

Memory prompts

• Do you remember a moment when the country seemed to be preparing for something big? What signs of anticipation—news coverage, ceremonies, souvenirs, or conversations—stand out in your memory?

• Was there a time when you or someone in your family marked a national event by buying or saving something special? A medal, a coin, a program, a newspaper, or another keepsake—and what became of it?

• How did you experience large public rituals or ceremonies when you were younger? Did you watch them in person, on television, or hear about them afterward—and how did that shape how real they felt?

• Looking back, how do you remember participating in history—not as a spectator, but as someone living through it? What small details help fix that moment in your mind?

What’s Ahead

Thanks for joining us for this look back at the eve of the Bicentennial year. Everything we do here is meant to spark your own memories of America’s Bicentennial—and we’d love to hear what this issue brought back for you. Share a comment and add your story to the archive.

Happy Holidays! We’ll see you on December 21st with another special holiday edition of the Bicentennial Memory Project.

Leave a comment

Welcome to the Bicentennial Memory Project, where we revisit the stories and moments of America’s 200th birthday, and help you capture your own.

With the holidays coming up, we’re changing the pace a bit. Instead of weekly posts, you’ll receive just three special issues over the next six weeks, starting with this Bicentennial Thanksgiving look back to November 1976.

Each issue will include several memory prompts to help you recall what you were doing fifty years ago.

So let’s step into Thanksgiving, 1976….

What’s Inside

Thanksgiving Day, November 25, 1976:

• President Ford’s Thanksgiving address

• The Band’s Last Waltz and a Thanksgiving dinner

• OJ Simpson’s record-setting game

Bicentennial Memory:

• Community Bicentennial Events

• The Main Event: Turkey, stuffing and canned cranberries

• The Macy’s Day Parade

What’s Ahead

• Preview of December 7 Post

• Preview of December 21 Christmas post

Thanksgiving Day, November 25, 1976

President Ford’s Thanksgiving address

Every American president since George Washington has made a Thanksgiving Proclamation. In that first one, Washington set aside Thursday, December 18, 1777, as a day of “solemn thanksgiving and praise,” and urged every citizen of the new nation to:

“Acknowledge with Gratitude their Obligation to [Almighty God] for Benefits received, and to implore such farther Blessings as they stand in Need of: And it having pleased him in his abundant Mercy, not only to continue to us the innumerable Bounties of his common Providence; but also to smile upon us in the Prosecution of a just and necessary War, for the Defense and Establishment of our unalienable Rights and Liberties; particularly in that he hath been pleased, in so great a Measure, to prosper the Means used for the Support of our Troops, and to crown our Arms with most signal success.”

Over the next eight decades, Americans celebrated Thanksgiving on various days, however in 1863, in the midsts of the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln codified the last Thursday of November as “a Day of Thanksgiving and Praise.”

It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently, and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American people. I do, therefore, invite my fellow-citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next as a Day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the heavens.

And I recommend to them that, while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners, or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty hand to heal the wounds of the nation, and to restore it, as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes, to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquility, and union.

Continuing the tradition set by America’s first president, the nation’s 38th president, Gerald Ford, gave his third and final Thanksgiving Proclamation on October 25, 1976.

Traditionally, Americans have set aside a special day to express their gratitude to the Almighty for the blessings of liberty, peace and plenty that have been bestowed upon a grateful Nation. The early settlers of this land possessed an unconquerable spirit and a reliance on Divine Providence that remains a part of the American character. That reliance, coupled with a belief in ourselves and a love of individual freedom, has brought this nation through two centuries of progress and kept us strong.

As we cross the threshold into our third century as a sovereign and independent Nation, it is especially appropriate that we reaffirm our trust in Him and express our gratitude for the unity, freedom and renewed sense of national pride we enjoy today.

NOW, THEREFORE, I, GERALD R. FORD, President of the United States of America, in accord with Section 6103 of Title 5 of the United States Code, do hereby proclaim Thursday, November 25, 1976, as a day of national thanksgiving. I call upon all Americans to join on that day with their friends and families in homes and places of worship throughout the land to offer thanks for the blessings we enjoy.

Let each of us resolve this Thanksgiving Day to make the coming year one in which our every deed will reflect our constant gratitude to God. Let us set a standard of honor, justice, and charity against which all the years of our third century may be measured.

Let us make this Thanksgiving a truly special one.

Memory prompts

• What do you remember about the mood or key messages in President Ford’s 1976 Thanksgiving address? Did his words resonate in your household, and why or why not?

• Did your family discuss the President’s speech at the dinner table or during the holiday? In what ways did national themes of gratitude or unity shape your Thanksgiving that year?

• How did the Bicentennial spirit influence your sense of American identity?

The Band’s Last Waltz and a Thanksgiving dinner

It’s not every day a concert finishes up with a turkey dinner for 5,000 attendees, but that’s just what happened on November 25, 1976 following what was billed as the “farwell performance” of the Canadian country rock group called simply The Band.

Know for their appearance at Woodstock as well as songs like “The Weight” (1968), “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” (1969), and “Up on Cripple Creek” (1969), some version of the group had been touring together almost nonstop since 1958.

The concert featured guest appearances some of the biggest names of the day including Paul Butterfield, Bobby Charles, Eric Clapton, Neil Diamond, Bob Dylan, Emmylou Harris, Ronnie Hawkins, Dr. John, Joni Mitchell, Van Morrison, the Staple Singers, Ringo Starr, Muddy Waters, Ronnie Wood, and Neil Young.

It was also filmed and turned into a documentary by longtime friend, Martin Scorsese. Released in 1977, The Last Waltz went on to great acclaim, and was selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the United States National Film Registry for being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.”

Memory prompts

• Was anyone in your circle talking about The Band’s “Last Waltz” concert on Thanksgiving night? Did the event influence your evening’s music or conversation?

• Did you or someone you know ever combine rock concerts or new traditions with classic holiday rituals? Share a memory of a Thanksgiving that felt especially musical or unconventional.

• What music—if any—became the soundtrack to your Bicentennial Thanksgiving, and how did it set the mood?

O.J. Simpson’s record-setting game

Thanksgiving and football have been an American tradition since November 29, 1934, when the Detroit Lions played the Chicago Bears at the University of Detroit Stadium.

With the exception of the war years, 1939 to 1944, a Turkey Day game has been played every years since, including on November 25, 1976 when the Detroit Lions and the Buffalo Bills faced off infront of a packed crowd at the Pontiac Silverdome.

Although the Lions earned the 27-14 win, the day belonged to the Buffalo’s 29-year-old running back, Orenthal James Simpson, as he scored both of the Bills’ touchdowns and broke his own NFL single-game rushing record by rushing for 273 yards.

Memory prompts

• Who watched the Lions/Bills game on TV during Thanksgiving 1976? Share memories of the excitement or surprise surrounding OJ Simpson’s record-breaking performance.

• How did sports coverage, radio, or TV sound in the background of your family celebrations, and what feelings did it evoke?

• Did football ever compete with—or contribute to—your family’s Thanksgiving traditions? How did people feel about sharing the holiday with big sporting moments?

Bicentennial Memories

Community Meals and Musicals

Students at Palestine Elementary in Arcanum, OH, went all out in celebrating the Bicentennial Thanksgiving during a two-day celebration in 1976 that included a special vegetable soup they made themselves from homegrown vegetables.

And holiday attire for the meal was encouraged.

Some of the girls were wearing long Pioneer dresses, while a few of the boys wore buckskins. Also a few of the classes had made special hats to wear. There were paper Pilgrim hats, complete with gold buckles, Pioneer maiden bonnets and even quite a few Indians with lots of feathers in their headbands.

To give the whole event a more “authentic” feel, students enjoyed their feast of soup, cookies and milk while sitting on blankets.

Elsewhere in Bay City, MI, a special Bicentennial Thanksgiving musical salute was put together to benefit the area’s Meals on Wheels programs. The musical extravaganze featured a 40-person community choir as well as various soloists and even a community band which entertained the crowd with patriotic selections.

Memory prompts

• Did you participate in or attend any community Bicentennial events, pageants, or musical performances over Thanksgiving week? What details or stories stand out?

• Was your neighborhood, school, or church especially active in marking Thanksgiving 1976 as part of the Bicentennial? Share a vivid or humorous detail from these celebrations.

• Did shared meals beyond your family table—community potlucks or special festival dinners—play a role that Thanksgiving? Who did you share them with?

The Main Event: Turkey, stuffing and canned cranberries

Although it’s possible cranberries were long a part of fall feasts — including early Thanksgiving meals, it wasn’t until 1941 when Massachusetts-based Ocean Spray began mass-marketing canned “Jelled Cranberry Sauce” nationwide, that this love-it-or-hate-it dish became a staple on the Thanksgiving menu.

Also on the table in 1976 was Stove Top Stuffing, “The anytime stuffing that hardly takes any time.” With more and more women entering the workforce each year, mothers felt pressured for time to serve home cooked meals. General Foods came to the rescue with Stove Top Stuffing. Employee Ruth Siems invented and patented this 15 minute wonder in 1972. The box of dehydrated bread, seasonings, and chicken bouillon came ready for a saucepan (no waiting for the oven to heat up). Stove Top became a staple in American homes.

On the Saturday after Thanksgiving 1976, Columnist Steve Weller passed on the leftover turkey jokes and instead offered his readers a cheeky explanation as to why we eat what we eat on Thanksgiving.

Memory prompts

• What foods were “must-haves” at your 1976 Thanksgiving table, especially items with a distinctly 1970s or Bicentennial twist?

• Did canned cranberries or other processed foods spark conversation, jokes, or controversies at your meal? Describe the most memorable (or unusual) dish served.

• Do you have a recipe or food memory from that year that has disappeared—or survived—across generations?

The Macy’s Day Parade

While 1976 marked America’s Bicentennial, it also marked the 50th anniversary of the annual Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.

Memory prompts

• Who in your family or friend group would wake up early to watch the Macy’s Parade? What do you remember about the excitement, the balloons, or seeing New York on TV?

• If you watched from New York itself, what was the mood on the streets, or what little details (costumes, weather, performers) have stuck in your memory?

• Did the parade television broadcast become background to your house’s preparations, or was it a centerpiece tradition?

• Was there a float, performer, or commercial that year that became the talk of your family?

• How did the mix of national traditions like the Parade and local customs shape the atmosphere of Thanksgiving in 1976 for you?

What’s Ahead

Thanks for joining us for this Thanksgiving look back at the events and moments of November 25, 1976. Everything we do here is meant to spark your own memories of America’s Bicentennial—and we’d love to hear what this issue brought back for you. Share a comment and add your story to the archive.

Happy Thanksgiving! We’ll see you on December 7 with another special holiday edition of the Bicentennial Memory Project.

Leave a comment

Hi and welcome to Bicentennial Memory Project, where we share our stories and memories about America’s 200th birthday, and encourage you to share and preserve yours.

This week, our topic is Bicentennial memories from the small screen.

PROMPT: What Bicentennial TV shows or specials had everyone talking? Anything you wish you could watch again?

Table of Contents

Feature Essay: How my generation learned the Preamble

This week in 1976: Jimmy Carter becomes America’s

Bicentennial Memory: Panasonic TV’s commercial

Preserving Your Stories: How to Host a Bicentennial Memories Watch Party

What’s Ahead

Bicentennial Memory Project is a private, nonpartisan grassroots newsletter dedicated to helping Americans tell, share and preserve their stories. Your likes, shares and restacks help raise awareness of this project and are much appreciated.

Feature Essay: How my entire generation learned the Preamble

by Lori Olson White

I don’t know about you, but one of my biggest and most lasting memories of the Bicentennial on television came from a Saturday morning and after school “animated educational short film” series called Schoolhouse Rock!

Schoolhouse Rock! first showed up on the console TV in my family’s living room in 1973. That first series was math-based and featured catchy tunes about multiplication.

The next year, Schoolhouse Rock! moved their focus to grammar and suddenly my friends and I were walking down the hallway in our hip-hugging bell bottoms and singing, Conjuction, Junction, What’s Your Function”.

Then came 1975 and the lead-up to America’s 200th birthday, and, of course, Schoolhouse Rock! showed up with the big guns —America Rock, an entire series dedicated to U.S. history.

The first America Rock song of 1975 was “No More Kings” which debuted during the first month of school, a foretelling of things to come. (BTW does anyone else see an uncanny resemblance between George in that video and Jonathan Groff’s hilarious King George in Hamilton, or is it just me?)

Then came Paul Revere in “The Shot Heard Round the World“, another great choice for the Bicentennial, but sort of a tired story, right? I mean, hadn’t Longfellow already covered everything?

Then, on October 25, 1975, America Rock put out what I think, and I think most folks my age agree, is the penultimate ear worm, a little ditty simply called “The Preamble”.

We the people
In order to form a more perfect union
Establish justice, insure domestic tranquility
Provide for the common defense
Promote the general welfare and
Secure the blessings of liberty
To ourselves and our posterity
Do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America

You’re humming it right now, aren’t you?

Over the next year, other episodes of America Rock came out, including the instant classic, I’m Just a Bill, but none could really compete with “The Preamble”.

It had sticking power.

In my school, tenth grade meant a full year of civics where we learned about the rights, responsibilities and duties of being an American citizen, the structure and function of the U.S. government, the principles of American democracy, and the importance of civic engagement. Good stuff to know, to be sure, but probably not something your average 15 year-old is very passionate about.

Unless, of course, they’d been programmed by TV to believe American history was cool!

When the time came to be tested on the founding documents — the Preamble and the Constitution — my classmates and I breezed through it, our toes tapping, and big smiles on our faces as we, enmass, broke out in a rousing chorus of, “We the people,
In order to form a more perfect union, Establish justice, insure domestic tranquility.”

Fifty years later, I still find myself humming that tune and quietly thanking our founding fathers for writing it, and America Rock for putting it to music.

If YOU have a Bicentennial story you’d like to share in a future edition of Bicentennial Memory Project, reach out in a DM and let us know!

---

Today in 1976: Jimmy Carter’s Promise

America’s Bicentennial year was more than a celebration of 200 years of independence — it was a national soul-searching. Amid parades, fireworks, and patriotic reflection, the country was also reckoning with disillusionment. The optimism of 1776 felt distant in the wake of Watergate, Vietnam, and a faltering economy. When voters went to the polls that November, they weren’t just choosing a president; they were deciding what kind of nation they wanted America to be in its third century.

In that moment of uncertainty, Jimmy Carter’s unlikely rise from a peanut farmer and one-term Georgia governor to President-elect became a symbol of renewal. Against the backdrop of the country’s 200th birthday, his campaign captured a yearning for honesty, humility, and moral leadership — qualities many Americans felt had been lost in Washington. Carter’s soft-spoken promise, “I’ll never lie to you,” resonated deeply in a nation eager to trust again.

At the campaign’s outset, few outside the South knew his name. But Carter’s disciplined, grassroots strategy of shaking hands in living rooms, church halls, and small-town diners transformed anonymity into advantage. He made the most of the expanded primary system, winning early contests that gave him national momentum over better-known rivals like George Wallace, Jerry Brown, and Mo Udall. By summer, the outsider from Plains, Georgia, stood as the Democratic nominee.

President Gerald Ford, who had inherited the Oval Office after Nixon’s resignation, sought to steady a wounded nation. His calm leadership helped restore dignity to the presidency, but his controversial pardon of Nixon remained an albatross. During the Bicentennial celebrations, Ford cast himself as a caretaker of American unity, presiding over a year meant to inspire pride rather than politics. Yet, as the confetti of the July 4th festivities settled, public frustration with inflation, unemployment, and mistrust in government lingered.

The campaign came alive with the first televised presidential debates since Kennedy and Nixon in 1960. Ford’s infamous assertion that “there is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe” momentarily halted his comeback, reinforcing doubts about his grasp of foreign policy. Carter, meanwhile, projected humility and sincerity and an image that fit perfectly with the country’s bicentennial mood of introspection and renewal.

On November 2, 1976, Carter narrowly defeated Ford, securing 297 electoral votes and just over half the popular vote. His coalition of Southern and Northern moderates reflected a fleeting moment of unity. But beyond the numbers, Carter’s victory symbolized something deeper: the rebirth of faith in American democracy.

Two centuries after declaring independence, the United States had once again chosen a leader who promised a new beginning — an honest government led not by power, but by conscience.

• Where were you during America’s Bicentennial year, and how did the excitement of the 200th anniversary shape your memories of the 1976 presidential election

• Do you remember watching Jimmy Carter or Gerald Ford on television during the campaign? What stood out to you about the televised debates—the first since Kennedy and Nixon in 1960?

• Many people recall seeing Jimmy Carter and his family on the evening news or in campaign ads that emphasized simplicity and sincerity. What do you remember about how television portrayed the candidates?

• Election night in 1976 was one of the closest in modern history. Do you remember staying up late to watch the results come in? What emotions or conversations do you recall from that night—or the morning after?

Bicentennial Memories

By the time this commercial for Panasonic TV aired in November of 1976, most American households already had a color tv, a marked change from just a few years earlier when black and white screens were still the norm.

• In 1976, many households were making the switch from black-and-white to color TV. What kind of television did you have at the time, and do you remember your first impressions of watching a program in color?

• What were your favorite shows or regular viewing routines in 1976? Were there certain nights of the week or programs your family always gathered around to watch together?

• How did you watch big national moments that year like the Bicentennial festivities or the Carter–Ford debates? Was the TV in the living room the center of attention, or did you listen on the radio instead?

• Do you remember the look and feel of television back then — turning the dial to change channels, adjusting the antenna, or seeing the test pattern after sign-off? What details stand out most vividly when you picture your TV set?

• Television news in 1976 had distinct personalities and a different pace than today. Which anchors or reporters do you remember watching, and how did they shape your understanding of the world that year?

Preserving Your Stories: How to Host a Bicentennial Memories Watch Party

There’s something magical about revisiting the year America turned 200. It was a summer of parades, fireworks, and red-white-and-blue everything. For many families, though, the real heart of the celebration happened not on Main Street but in the living room, gathered around the television. The Bicentennial was one of the first national events that truly felt shared, because almost everyone experienced it the same way, on TV.

Hosting a Bicentennial Memories Watch Party is a great way to bring that feeling back. It’s a chance to gather friends and family, watch the shows and news clips that defined the year, and let old memories bubble to the surface.

Start by choosing what to watch. Maybe it’s a favorite sitcom like Happy Days or The Mary Tyler Moore Show, a variety special filled with flag-waving numbers, or even coverage of the tall-ship parades that filled American harbors that July. Old commercials work wonders for stirring memory — nothing brings back a time and place like a jingle you haven’t heard in fifty years. Many of these clips live online now, waiting to be rediscovered.

Once you’ve found your lineup, set the scene. Dim the lights, pop some popcorn, and imagine the TV glow of 1976. If you happen to have an old black-and-white set tucked away in the attic, dust it off for atmosphere. A few vintage touches, think folding TV trays, bowls of Chex Mix, a red-white-and-blue centerpiece, can turn an ordinary evening into a trip back in time.

As the programs roll, invite conversation. Ask what everyone remembers about watching television in those days: the way the picture would flicker just before you had to adjust the antenna, or how thrilling it was the first time you saw a fireworks show broadcast in color. Pause between segments to trade stories about where you were that summer, what you were doing on July 4th, or who in the family controlled the TV dial. The goal isn’t just to watch but to remember and to let the small details of home and habit come rushing back.

Keep a notebook nearby, or record the evening if everyone agrees. These casual conversations often uncover wonderful family stories and snippets of memory that might otherwise fade. Later, you can pull those recollections together into a short “Bicentennial Memory Book,” complete with photos from the time and quotes from the watch party.

And don’t forget the food. Serve something that feels right for the era: deviled eggs, cheese logs, chips with onion dip, or a flag-themed cake. The smells and flavors will do as much to spark memory as the shows themselves.

By the time the credits roll, you’ll have done more than relive a few hours of 1976 television — you’ll have preserved the stories that make that year personal. The Bicentennial was about looking back with pride and forward with hope. Hosting a watch party today lets us do both, one memory at a time.

What’s Ahead

Next week’s prompt: What moment from the 1976 Bicentennial still makes you smile when you think about it?

Leave a comment