Dear friends: On this Liberation Day, I tip a solemn and melancholic salute to veterans and their comrades who paid with their lives in defense of our freedom.<\/p>\n
Yes, the term freedom has been echoing in my ears since my grammar school days attending flag ceremonies every Monday. But it wasn\u2019t the Star Spangled Banner that I find patriotic nor is it Gi Talu` Gi Halum Tasi or the staccato Battle Hymn of the Republic.<\/p>\n
It was America The Beautiful that says in part, \u201cO beautiful for spacious skies, for amber waves of grain, for purple mountain majesties, above the fruited plain! O beautiful for patriot dream, that sees beyond the years\u2026and crown thy good with brotherhood, from sea to shining sea!<\/p>\n
Ti Gi Un` Palasyun I Riku reminds us that home poor we may be but I won\u2019t exchange it for anything in the world. These pearly isles are home for our people. Happy Liberation Day!<\/p>\n
John S. DelRosario Jr.<\/strong> Dear friends: On this Liberation Day, I tip a solemn and melancholic salute to veterans…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[271,67,4673],"class_list":["post-255576","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-letters-to-the-editor","tag-liberation-day","tag-people","tag-star-spangled-banner"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255576","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=255576"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255576\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=255576"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=255576"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=255576"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nAs Gonno, Saipan<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"