Show ISA Standard-Examin- Thursday er Nov 22 1990 Opinion Day of Thanks Modem versions of the most traditional of American holidays unfold today Since 1621 when the Pilgrims on Plymouth Rock initiated it Americans have paused to observe a day of thanks for the bounties of the land and express appreciation for family The temptation as always is to be complacent as we pause with family friends and neighbors in reflection of our personal love and respect for those whose values are shared in grand tradition But the startling events occurring around the world deem otherwise The late autumn landscape the smell of turkey fresh from the oven the smell of bread and pies baking the smell of vegetables cooking on the stove tops promise a celebration of the harvest's bounty But this celebration is marred We cannot forget the tent cities of Saudi Arabia where thousands of Americans attired in drab uniforms of the military are sitting down for their Thanksgiving feast They will not be part of the picturesque settings that are normally associated with Thanksgiving within the family circle They are surrounded by miles and miles of sand with military machines standing as sentries They may or may not get a glimpse of their commander-in-chief George Bush who has opted with wife first lady Barbara Bush to share this family his day with the troops The president is showing the appreciation and gratitude of the American people who will be remembering those brave servicemen as they gather around festive tables to offer prayers of thanksgiving There is parallel to the adversity of today’s Thanksgiving with that of the Pilgrims Like our military men and women they shared a feast of thanksgiving in a distant land far from the shores of their homelands separated from loved ones facing an uncertain future There is good reason for concern in the midst of festivities because of the unsettled Middle East situation Tradition will see offerings of justified gratitude for a shared harvest blessings of personal comforts of being rich with family and friends who share basic values But on another level Thanksgiving 1990 is an occasion to wish and pray that peace will come speedily to the Middle East without warfare and loss of life on both sides Giving thanks for As we gather together to count the Lord’s blessings 369 years after the fust Thanksgiving Day we are grateful O God that the Cold War has ended and a new war can still be prevented from starting for the crumbling of communism and the stumbling new steps toward freedom in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union for hope and home and holographs for holy days and holidays and hugs For the countries which join together to stop aggression we thank Thee “Dear Lord and Father of Mankind" and for the new NATO and Warsaw Pact agreement to reduce arms for the Common Market common causes common stock and uncommon people for the United Nations when it’s effective and a long pregnancy when it’s safely ended and a new life when it begins for bargains and Babar and barbecues and Beamaise for pickles and picnics and piccolos and Jean-Lu- c Picard “Eternal Father strong to save whose arm hath bound the restless wave" we are thankful today that families matter and at least for today calories don’t count for daughters and doughnuts and doggie bags for dolls and donors and Doner and Blitzen for contracts for nurses and zones and no-cfor newlyweds and newborns and neighbors new hires and New Kids on the Block For summits and Samaritans and sons and soup and songs for unicorns and universities and UNICEF for “Look Mom no cavities” and “Hi honey I’m home" we give Thee thanks “O God our help in ages past our hope for years to come" And for the Chicago ng ut Huntsman charity a boost for Ogden Salt Lake City Industrialist Jon Huntsman did more than anticipated as a visitor to Ogden and keynote speaker at the annual Leaders in Business Conference sponsored by The He made Weber County the beneficiary of his generosity He sprang a stunning surprise on the audience one that has pleased chamber officials It sent them scrambling to explore the best possible returns they can achieve with investment of $5000 presented by Huntsman Huntsman is chairman and chief executive officer of the Huntsman group of companies including Huntsman Chemical Corpn the largest privately held chemical company in the nation His phenomenal business successes are the personification of entrepreneurship He began his plastic packaging products on borrowed money He parlayed that into a major producer of petrochemical products that are sold throughout the world even in the Soviet Union It was in his role as Gov Norm Bangcrtcr’s ambassador for economic development that brought him to Ogden last week As he was unfolding his personal experiences as an entrepreneur for the Ogden conference he pulled a check in the amount of $5000 from his vest pocket handed it to bewildered Ogden chamber officials saying “add this to your economic development efforts" Huntsman’s philanthropic kindness is legendary’ He offers financial assistance to disadvantaged people throughout the world: earthquake and flood victims the homeless and hungry He has funded medical and educational centers throughout the world This past year he and his family funded the Huntsman Environmental Research Center at Utah State University The Huntsman Center on the University of Utah campus is a name tribute to the family’s generosity Huntsman’s unsolicited gift to Ogden is appreciated It will be wisely invested It has a cadre of local economic developers considering several options possibly crafting an educational program on entrepreneurship demonstrating for students that sucChamber-OgdenWeb- cess er achievable is if sincere desire motivation and ingenuity A there is Joan Beck Bears and gummy bears and teddy bears and Goldilocks for heroes and herons and hearths and herbs for “Jeopardy" jeeps and joggers Michael Jordan jigsaws and jazz “Our Father's God to Thee author of liberty" we offer grateful praise to Thee today for the blessed assurances that “Your baby’s just perfect” and “It's benign" and “Your cholesterol’s down” and “You’ve got the job” and “In the beginning God We give Thee thanks too for “I have a dream” and “The Lord is my shepherd I shall not want” and “one nation indivisible with liberty and justice for all” and “In an old house in Paris that was covered with vines” and “God so loved the world” and “They lived happily ever after” Mothers and grandmothers and foster mothers and founding mothers and fairy godmothers and mothers of invention fill us with thanksgiving this day “God of grace and God of glory” So too do smokers who quit and marriages that last for a lifetime g “Messiahs” and mesas and Mensa and meteors and memories cathedrals and catfish and cataract surgery fugues and fudge and furnaces and fruit Hobbs and hobbits and hobbies and horses “O Lord when we in awesome wonder consider all the worlds Thy hands have made” we give thanks for trout and trombones and trusts and truths we hold to be for amber and embers and om sing-alon- merry-go-roun- freedom new-foun-d ds budsmen for condors and condos and Concorde and concerts We are grateful too for gene mapping and generics for generosity and genies for geniuses and Geneva for the Ninth Symphony and the Nineteenth Amendment for newspapers and networking and “Nutcracker” For families and family men and family doctors and family planning we thank Thee “O God that sitteth upon the circle of the Earth and before whom its inhabitants are as grasshoppers” And for jeans and teens and salad greens for down and first downs and downtown for dolphins and doodles and doggerel for paramedics and parachutes and parades and par for umbrellas and umpires and umbilical cords and “until we meet again mav God hold you in the palm of His hand” “God who is our refuge and strength a very present help in trouble” we are grateful for a shelter from the storm and a bridge over trouble for answered prayers and amazing grace for rest after work for healing after hurt for sunshine after rain and dawn after dark for chocolate and cheeseburgers and chapels and Chopin for catalogs and synagogues for vacations and vocations and vaccinations and always and for ever more that “neither dearth nor life nor angels nor principalities nor powers nor things present nor things to come nor height nor depth nor any other creature shall be able to separate us from the love of God” self-evide- nt Chicago Tribune People chipped away Plymouth Rock Think about Thanksgiving for a while and you get beyond turkeys and stuffing and football games Think hard enough and you get back to the Pilgrims and bountiful harvests and of course Plymouth Rock We went there a few years ago while on vacation in New England My wife and I thought it would make a nice side trip for our two daughters They could see a piece of history firsthand They could see the place where in 1620 most of the 104 Pilgrims set foot on the shores of this country They could see The Rock Imagine our shock when we saw the veritable pebble that lay before us in the bottom of the monument Could this really be the mighty Plymouth Rock the Pilgrims had landed on? It did have the date 1620 carved into it I admit I'd expected Gibraltar but this was a bathtub-size-d piece of stone We wondered what disaster might have befallen The Rock Maybe some natural calamity a hurricane earthquake or terrible flood I walked over to an g man and caught the end of his conversation with a tourist “It used to be bigger” the man said “But people have been taking pieces of it for several hundred years It’s been moved and broken numerous times” There was resignation in his voice and a pained expression on his face He was embarrassed Recently I was doing research for the Thanksgiving PTA bulletin board when the subject came up again So I did a little research into the strange — some would say tragic — history of Plymouth RncL official-lookin- I found out Plymouth Rock is granite Because few rocks like it arc iound m the area scientists believe it was dropped in Plymouth Mass by a receding glacier For thousands of years it sat near the shoreline undisturbed except for a big wave or an occasional bird Even alter the Pilgrims lunded cm or near it it was pretty much ignored No i ie wrote about The Rock No memorials were erected The Pilgrims had more important things to worry about like surviving John F Rhodes In 1771 some businessmen decided to build a wharf over it Some people thought this was a bad idea but no one wanted to stand in the way of progress The wharf was eventually built with a hole in the middle to allow the huge rock to suck up through it All traffic on the pier was forced to travel over or around The Rock Real trouble began on Dec 22 1774 when a group of patriots decided to relocate it to nearby Meeting House Square They used tools and 40 oxen to move it but as they lifted the rock it fell and broke into two pieces — top and bottom The patriots decided the upper part of the stone was more important After all hadn’t the Pilgrims walked on top of the stone? The top of Plymouth Rock was promptly loaded into a cart transported to the square and placed next to an elm tree There it sat for many years and many people saw it Some chipped away small pieces to keep as souvenirs The bottom of the rock remained under the wharf except for a small part that stuck through it A grocer whose store was near the edge of the pier occasional y swept off this part of the stone proclaiming “I’m cleaning off the cornerstone of the nauon!” He also kept a hammer and chisel nearby for anyone who wanted a keepsake In 1834 the people of Plymouth thought The Rock might be salcr at Pilgrim Hall a new museum in the center of town Once again the upper part of The Pock was loaded into a can and proudly paraded to the hall This time m front of the whole town the cart broke and again the rock fell and broke in half People scrambled to collect the loose smaller pieces but the two biggest remaining pieces got to Pilgnm Hall IH this time visitors were beginning to notice hovs small The Rock was They often were surprised to learn that the rock on which their forefathers had stepped was so ti- - ny In 1859 the people of Plymouth got tired of explaining the size of The Rock The bought the wharf and tore it down Then they excavated the lower half of it and built a canopy around the pieces When the canopy was finally completed 21 years later it was loo small for The Rock and more was chipped away to make it fit In 1 883 all three pieces of Plymouth Rock were cemented together in the canopy and the date 620 was carved into its side But people still could get close enough to chip away The Rock continued to shnnk In 1920 300 years after the landing the present memorial was built New poeple would have to stand above The Rock unable to touch it Still people sometimes jumped down and stole small pieces The Rock — 30 feet long in 1715 — was down to 6 feet (in 1920) la weight had fallen by 80 percent Parts of The Rock have "been scattered around the world A piece stands in the courtyard of an inn in Immingham England the place from which the Pilgrims fled There arc several la-pieces at a Conoco refinery' in Hull Mass and a piece sits in Plymouth Congregational Church in Massachusetts There are also large pieces in Los Gatos Cakfi the Nevada State Museum in Carson City Nev and the Smithsonian Institution in Washington D C One piece of The Rock was made into doorstep and another was broken up and became part of a concrete floor Smaller pieces were crafted into eanrgs and cufflinks sold by the Aquarian Society of Plymouth The vast majority of The Rock was taken by individuals the pieces stashed away in drawers and jewelry’ boxes around the world Plymouth Rock has not been ravaged by natural catastrope or some freedom-hatindespot It has been trashed by those care about it most Those whose desire to get a piece of The Rock have almost destroyed the symbol It’s easy to understand why the man at the Plymouth Rock Memorial was so embarrassed 1 100-pou- ge 50-pou- nd 400-pou- nd g fikiiUi AiW:rx |