By Pat Green
Friends, Happy 250th Birthday to you!
I hope you have all received and read the special collaboration of Surviving Spouse topics of
interest that was sent to you. There is another quite lengthy booklet that is available to you on
the MOAA website. The publication is “The Day After Calls”.
When I needed this information, it had not yet been compiled. But a dear friend used it last
year, when her father-in-law died. Even though both she and her husband and father-in-law
are retired Army officers, she found it invaluable. It is lengthy, but might come in very handy.
Thinking about what to write about concerning Independence Day, I came across an
interesting book review “Founders in Sync” by Meghan Cox Gurdon, in the Wall Street
Journal. The book she reviewed is A PERFECT COINCIDENCE by Jim Rasenberger. It’s a
story of a very unlikely coincidence. Meghan describes the book as “a delight, a sparkling
work of narrative nonfiction that acquaints the reader with the thoughts and doings of two
giants of American democracy, while telling the story of the founding of our fractious country”.
The book is published by Scribner and 496 pages and makes the case for the Divine Hand in
the moving of American affairs,
Mr. Rasenberger writes of the on-off-on again friendship of Thomas Jefferson and John
Adams. They meet in Philadelphia in 1775 and collaborate on the Declaration of
Independence. Then they become Ambassadors and great friends. During a Presidential
campaign, their relationship crumbles. They are enemies for a decade. As their age
advances, they rediscover their friendship. Both die on the 50th anniversary of the
Declaration. Oddly, another great contributor to our freedom, James Monroe died on July 4,
1831, five years later. A coincidence?
