In 2011, my wife, Mary Jo, and I were in Washington and walked over to the National Archives. Neither of us had ever seen the original Declaration of Independence or the Constitution. It had taken me more than 60 years to get there.
I’ll never forget it. Standing over the Declaration, I could make out the signatures. Jefferson. Adams. Franklin. Men who pledged their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor. I got goose bumps.
Then came the Constitution and those three words: “We the People.” I got a lump in my throat. Mary Jo was wiping her eyes.
Veterans Day reminds us to honor those who defended those words. Every American who joins the armed forces swears to support and defend the Constitution. Too many have died keeping that oath. Yet most of the people they served will never see the document. It sits in one building, in one city.
Back home in Burke County, North Carolina, a thought came to me. What if I could bring that experience home to our neighbors?
Winning county and city approval took two years. Then another obstacle: The Archives doesn’t publish prints or measurements of its displays.
So we drove back to Washington. You can’t pull a tape measure on a national treasure. We had a plan anyway. I stepped up to the end of the Constitution, took two strides and was in the middle. About 12 feet long, then. Mary Jo faced the crowd and marked the elevations on her body.
Every Charters of Freedom setting we have built rests on two paces of a short guy and three marks on my wife. Like the founders, we worked with what we had.
On July 2, 2014, we dedicated the first setting outside Washington, on the Burke County Courthouse green in Morganton, N.C.: life-size replicas of the Declaration, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, free and open to all.
From the start, this has been about education. History, to preserve the story of our founding. Civics, so everyone knows how government, federal, state and local, is meant to serve and protect We the People.
Not everyone can get to Washington. So we bring the documents home, displayed with dignity, and give each community a place to celebrate, honor and reflect.
Twelve years later, our educational nonprofit, Foundation Forward, has built, gifted and dedicated 84 settings in 22 states, from Florida to New York, from South Carolina to California and Alaska. Presidential sites have signed on: the Ronald Reagan site in Simi Valley, Calif., Jimmy Carter’s in Plains, Ga., and Benjamin Harrison’s in Indianapolis. Six more presidential sites are scheduled for 2027.
I’m a manufacturer. I started Patterson Fan in 1989, and we make things out of metal, so we built the documents ourselves. The first settings used six life-size panels etched in quarter-inch bronze, each over 60 pounds, under half-inch Hammerglass on limestone, granite or brick cores. Beautiful, but slow. We could finish fewer than 15 a year, a pace that would never reach every community in my lifetime. So we switched to laser-etched stainless steel. As our laser shop expands, we will soon supply up to 350 communities a year.
Then comes the dedication, and we do it right. Bands, speeches, kids, a cannon salute, sometimes a parachute flag drop. And an honor guard, because local veterans have earned a front-row seat.
After one dedication, an older veteran came up to me with tears in his eyes, shaking his head. Finally he managed, “There are no words.” He shook my hand and walked away. I wiped my own eyes and went on greeting people.
Every setting is built to last 300 to 500 years. Each holds a time capsule, and all of them open on Sept. 17, 2087, the 300th anniversary of the Constitution’s signing. I won’t be there. I hope some of those kids will.
Mary Jo and I have paid about 95 percent of the cost. Local donations and some state funding cover the rest. A citizen ought to be able to stand before these words without buying a plane ticket.
The calls now come to us. Our goal is a setting in every one of the nation’s 3,144 counties, boroughs, parishes and the District of Columbia. We hope future leaders will grow up in those communities, their children talking about their own Charters of Freedom, the one in their hometown.
This Veterans Day, thank a veteran. Then go read what they swore to defend. If you can’t get to Washington, we’re bringing it to you.