Flag Bearers Are Found Few and Far Between These Days and Especially on a Day Hovering Around 23 degrees Fahrenheit

So when I saw this lowly figure in the distance, as I was driving down Mequon Rd. Mequon WI,  I knew that there was a story there worth stopping and freezing for.

Meet Nick Trofimoff. Nick was walking with a message, one worth freezing for but also one that is worthy of giving a listen to. Nick has family in the military. But more than that. Nick recognizes that this country is missing something these days- patriotism. He remembered 9/11, “People came together and were patriotic after 9/11. People forgot. Now that We’ve left Afghanistan, people are forgetting all over again.”, he lamented.

Indeed, if anything, we are probably more pulled apart now than anytime since the civil war. Though many had high hopes for this past year, it is clear that the rhetoric coming out of  the Washington DC leadership is creating more division, not less.

The real government leadership needed to heal and bring this country back together is sorely lacking today. In this age of symbolism, the symbolic leadership that we are experiencing from our government leaders is not going to cut it anymore. We need substance, action and results. So it is left to us to take the lead, to pick up the one banner that unites more than it divides, to embrace the unity that in our darkest moments, held us together as a nation.

Though the flag is largely symbolic, it represents the spirit of unity that we have in God’s gift of freedom to this country and the principles upon which this country was founded. If each of us in humility and gratitude could lay down their individual flags and in symbolism and substance begin to rally, one with another, to the unity that our flag represents, we just might, with God’s guidance, bring our nation back together.

May God bless Nick for warming my heart on a very cold January day, as he trudged along in the freezing cold. May we all become as Nick, united as lovers of our country, both in spirit and substance because God only knows how badly that is what is needed today!

Nick gave me permission for public publishing of his image and my permission is granted for public publishing with attribution.

My humble thanks for your kind consideration.

©Vince Schmuki/ Representing WIN-Wisconsinites Interest Now. All rights reserved.

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