America fêtes birthday with homecomings, parades

By David B. Caruso ~ The Associated Press

PHILADELPHIA -- The celebrations offered snapshots of the nation at hundred year intervals: Troops coming home from Iraq hugged loved-ones for the first time in months, President Bush marked the centennial of aviation, and Americans feted the birth of their independence 227 years ago.

At Forbes Field in Topeka, Kan., parents, spouses and children of 135 National Guard soldiers, who were dispatched to Iraq five months ago, held emotional reunions.

"I'm not sure that any of us really appreciates the struggles George Washington went through in Valley Forge. This kind of personalizes those sacrifices," said Bill Burkett of Muskogee, Okla., whose daughter Stephanie was among the returning troops. Other troops came home Friday to North Carolina, Wisconsin and Maine.

Anecita Hudson, whose son was a POW in Iraq, began celebrating the holiday Wednesday at Fort Bliss, Texas, where Army Spc. Joseph Hudson and other former POWs received medals for bravery. The Hudsons were back in their hometown of Alamogordo, N.M., for the Fourth of July.

"Here in America, I really see that people are happy on the Independence Day," Anecita Hudson said. "It's really kind of overwhelming to see them all celebrating."

In Dayton, Ohio, President Bush climbed a flag-draped stage flanked by military jets to praise the work of U.S. troops and celebrate the 100th anniversary of flight in the hometown of the Wright brothers.

"Today and everyday, the people of this land are grateful for their freedom, and we are proud to call ourselves citizens of the United States of America," Bush told a cheering crowd on a tarmac at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.

Natalie Neal, 39, of nearby West Chester, Ohio, was up before dawn to secure a place in the crowd of thousands.

"There's not a better way to spend the Fourth of July than with your military and with your president," Neal said.

In the nation's birthplace, Philadelphia leaders honored the first female Supreme Court justice, Sandra Day O'Connor, with the city's Liberty Medal for embodying the founding principles of the nation.

O'Connor also joined jazz man Wynton Marsalis, Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell and others in opening the new National Constitution Center.

The duty to uphold the Constitution is shared by citizens, lawmakers, presidents and judges alike, O'Connor told a crowd outside the new museum, about three blocks from Independence Hall, where the Constitution was drafted in 1787.

"I find the system quite comforting," O'Connor said. "By spreading the responsibility to uphold the Constitution among so many, the framers enlisted a legion of defenders for their new charter."

The new $185 million center holds the first public printings of the Constitution, an inkwell Abraham Lincoln used in signing the Emancipation Proclamation and exhibits recalling the many controversies that have tested the Constitution in its history, including tickets to President Andrew Johnson's 1868 impeachment trial and a lock pick from the Watergate burglary.

O'Connor and the other celebrities got a scare during the ceremony when a heavy frame crashed onto the stage as they pulled ribbons to reveal a mural. Three people, including Philadelphia's mayor and the museum's president, were treated for minor injuries.

In southern California, spectators gathered for fireworks shows at the Hollywood Bowl, the Queen Mary and other venues in the Los Angeles area. The Rose Bowl's display saw its reputation as the region's most dazzling challenged by a show in Carson, Calif., that claimed to have more firepower.

In Webster Groves, Mo., a suburb of St. Louis, a 6-year-old girl was killed after she fell from a parade float and was run over by the vehicle. The child, Emily Lemcke, died shortly after 2 p.m. a hospital spokeswoman said.

At the Fourth of July celebration on the Mall in Washington, D.C., 80 people were treated for heat-related problems and eight of them were hospitalized, fire and rescue workers reported.

Security was lighter in many cities compared to last year, when the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks were fresh in many minds.

Baltimore raised its alert status Thursday to its second highest level, mostly as a practice run, officials said, while the federal terror alert status remained unchanged at yellow, the middle of the five-color scale.

In Dearborn, Mich., home to one of the nation's largest concentrations of people with roots in the Middle East, turmoil overseas heightened the importance of this Independence Day for many.

"Independence," said Shane Safawi, who emigrated from Lebanon in 1988 and became a U.S. citizen about five years later. "The word itself means a lot. You are free. The whole country is free. It is a moment that you celebrate."