Greater Cincinnati Chapter • Freedoms Foundation at Valley ForgeMarch-April 2018 • Ted Kalsbeek, Interim President and Chaplain

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Chapter

MeeTing each OTherOrientation for Spirit of America Conference: March 18 at Sycamore Church

Students, chaperone and parents meet for the first time.

Listening to each other; beginning the dialogue.

On the Way to Valley Forge

Map of where our students attend school.

On the morning of April 12, sixteen representatives from the Cincinnati Chapter of the Freedoms Foundation at Valley Forge will leave for the Spirit of America Conference from the Cincinnati International Airport.

Chapter members have the opportunity to

donate toward additional travel expenses for

the conference as well as the banquet. Watch

for a letter coming your way with information.

annual awardS and recOgniTiOn BanqueTYour invitations are in the mail. Please respond! Send the RSVP card in the enclosed envelop along with your choice of entrée and your payment for the meal by April 9 to Theresa Bradley. The address is on the return envelope.

“Appetizers and Action” - Chapter Member Business Meeting

Please come 30 minutes prior to the Banquet for

“Appetizers and Action” – our spring business

meeting. This will be a BRIEF meeting to elect

the slate of officers and hear reports and plans –

especially the plans for our new initiatives.

Please indicate your plan to attend on the RSVP

card in the invitation.

The Tyranny Of TiMe “aS TiMe gOeS By”Dear Chapter members and friends, Hiding somewhere among the memories of a fading past, is a song made popular by Frank Sinatra. Its title is the subject of this editorial, “As Time Goes By.” In the first verse, the composer says, “…a sigh is still a sigh, the fundamental things apply, as time goes by.” My interpretation of the sigh still being a sigh as the time passes is that sameness is common and less important than the fundamental things applied to life as time goes on.

The combination of fundamental things and the passing of time deserves our attention in connection with life in general and specifically with our life and work as a Chapter of Freedoms Foundation.

The importance of that connection captured my attention recently in a funeral home in Liberty, Indiana, while attending the funeral of a friend. The passing of time became a fresh reality as I was attending the funeral of an early boyhood neighbor and high school classmate. The passing of time became especially real because 66 years earlier, I did my friend’s wedding in Oxford, Ohio. I was ordained just a year earlier and that wedding was only the third of over 500 as the years of ministry passed by.

I was forcibly reminded that not only hours and days pass quickly by but so do months and years. Time doesn’t stop to give us a rest. It is like a tyrant forcibly pressing us to keep going whether we feel like it or not. It is like a governing power relentlessly forcing us to yield to its demands making it either something resented or a blessing, a gift enabling productive activity.

Time is a “fundamental thing” applied to life as it goes by. It enables us to have memories of the past but also the opportunity to have a productive future, to plan and experience a career, to do good, to help others, to contribute to a family’s cultural and spiritual heritages.

Further emphasizing the pressing of time was the opportunity for me and my daughter, Theresa, and son-in-law, Wayne, to drive past where I grew up and where later I worked as a young farm hand. We passed the church in Liberty where I went to Sunday School, and the church in College Corner

where I preached my last semester of college and where I was ordained in May, 1951.

To thoughtfully visit places of one’s past life is also to ponder that life. Was it productive, helpful to others? Did it glorify God? Thinking about the song’s “fundamental things” applied to life as time passed by, was the stewardship of one’s life all that it could have been?

Thinking of the teenagers whose lives we touch by means of conferences and other events, we who have experienced the passing of many decades of time have the opportunity and obligation to influence their stewardship of patriotic life. Most of you as chapter members may not have personal connection with students, but your influence can be exerted by thoughtful, financial and prayerful support.

As a Chapter and Board of Directors, we need to seize every opportunity to encourage young citizens to be the very best persons and citizens they can be.

It is quite a stretch from a funeral message to this newsletter article, but there is an application to be made. The officiating priest at the funeral gave good advice to family members using their loved one as an example. He had become a highly regarded veterinarian who worked hard to be the best he could be. Using that as an illustration and incentive, the priest urged family members and others to “be the best they could be” in life and vocation.

Is that not a challenge to the Chapter and Board members, to be the best we can be, applying the fundamentals of life in the passing of time as persons, citizens, patriots and volunteers?

In further support of our use of passing time, some words of famous people may help.

Ben Franklin said, “ Do not squander time, for it is the stuff life is made of.”

Longfellow said, “Time is the life of the soul.”

Queen Elizabeth I’s last words were, “All my possessions for a moment of time.”

The Apostle Paul in Ephesians 5:15 said, “Look carefully as you walk, making the most of time because the days are evil.”

Respectfully,