Visiting dear friends in Florida..

We recently had the wonderful opportunity to visit our dear friends Kathy and Bob Popp in Florida and their wonderful 100 year old mom, Mertyl Stark  . Kathy fixed us all a delicious dinner and we sat around enjoying "old times" and catching up on  news in our families. I was totally blown away when Mertyl  recited the Gettysburg address and also  the Preamble to the United States.!( stated below for those who have not memorized it yet) She is such an amazing woman and demonstrates such knowledge  and true patriotism. I also  found  her wit refreshing  and  love of poetry  very touching, as she recited poems she wrote herself for her grandsons. Kathy and I attended the KSB school of nursing ,Dixon,Illinois , graduating in 1966. we have remained liked sisters every since and not a day goes by, that I don't think of our dear friends in Florida.

 

 

 

 

The Preamble to the US Constitution

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence ,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 

 

The Gettysberg Address

by Abraham Lincoln

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth. 

so tell me...did you ever memorize these and if so...

could you still recite them at age

100 years and 4 months???