The Weathers Family

Founding Legacy

2009-07-03T20:45:00.007-04:00

233 years ago, 56 men pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor to the cause of liberty and freedom. I wonder how many Americans today would be willing to do that? Most Americans don’t even realize the significance of the phrase lives, fortunes, and sacred honor. We’re so familiar with those words that we never think about what they really mean. It wasn’t just a superfluous way of signing a document. They were truly pledging their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor. And indeed, many of the signers lost their fortunes, some lost their lives or the lives of family members, but not one lost their most prized possession, their sacred honor.

Take for example the story of Abraham Clark, as told in a speech titled "The Americans Who Risked Everything", given by Rush H. Limbaugh, Jr. (father of the political talk-show host Rush Limbaugh):

“Of those 56 who signed the Declaration of Independence, nine died of wounds or hardships during the war. Five were captured and imprisoned, in each case with brutal treatment. Several lost wives, sons or entire families. One lost his 13 children. Two wives were brutally treated. All were at one time or another the victims of manhunts and driven from their homes. Twelve signers had their homes completely burned. Seventeen lost everything they owned. Yet not one defected or went back on his pledged word. Their honor, and the nation they sacrificed so much to create is still intact. And, finally, there is the New Jersey signer, Abraham Clark.

He gave two sons to the officer corps in the Revolutionary Army. They were captured and sent to that infamous British prison hulk afloat in New York Harbor known as the hell ship Jersey, where 11,000 American captives were to die. The younger Clarks were treated with a special brutality because of their father. One was put in solitary and given no food. With the end almost in sight, with the war almost won, no one could have blamed Abraham Clark for acceding to the British request when they offered him his sons' lives if he would recant and come out for the King and Parliament. The utter despair in this man's heart, the anguish in his very soul, must reach out to each one of us down through 200 years with his answer: "No."

Then there is Francis Lewis, signer of the Declaration from New York. His home was plundered and destroyed by British troops, his wife was taken captive and kept prisoner under horrible conditions. She was exchanged just a few months later, but her health had been so severely damaged during her imprisonment that she died shortly afterward.

One thing that stands out in the phrase lives, fortunes, and sacred honor is the fact that they listed their lives and their fortunes, but it was only their honor that they held to be sacred. Honor was a thing prized above fortune and life. Life and fortune are things that can be taken from you, but no one can take your honor.

In today's culture we have lost the concept of honor. Webster's 1828 dictionary defines honor as "Reputation; good name... True nobleness of mind; dignified respect for character..." I think this succinctly sums up what true honor really is. As Thomas Jefferson said,

"Nobody can acquire honor by doing what is wrong."

To us, the founding generation, living in a society and culture that hardly resembles our own, may seem irrelevant to us. But many lessons can still be learned from their generation; from their successes and their failures, from their strengths and their shortcomings.

Not only can we hope to avoid their mistakes, we can also build upon great and noble things that they accomplished, both in their public and private lives. Sadly, most Americans have little or no knowledge of men like Patrick Henry, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and George Washington. These are the men who used to be our heroes and role models, but instead, we look to Hollywood to find our heroes.

We are forgetting and forsaking the incredible legacy left to us by our Founding Fathers. It has been lied about, cast aside, and declared irrelevant. But we need to return to that legacy that that has given us the freedoms and liberties that we enjoy today. We cannot just stand by and watch as our country descends into the ash heap of history. I think what George Washington said to the Continental Army after the signing of the Declaration is just as applicable to us today as it was then:

"The fate of millions will now depend, under God, on the courage and conduct of this army. Let us therefore rely upon the goodness of the cause, and the aid of the supreme Being, in whose hands victory is, to animate and encourage us to great and noble actions -- The eyes of all our countrymen are now upon us, and we shall have their blessings, and praises, if happily we are the instruments of saving them from tyranny mediated against them."

Last week, while America discussed the death of Michael Jackson, Congress passed the biggest tax increase in American history. If we want our politicians to be responsible and stop this insanity of massive federal spending; if we want to see an end to the ever-increasing rate of government expansion; if we want to preserve for ourselves and our children and grandchildren the right to live our own lives without the ever-present nanny state 'protecting' us from ourselves, then we better get up off the couch and starting doing something about it.

Write your Senators and Representatives and tell them that you won't put up with any more big-government Republicans who are spending our country into bankruptcy, allow the continued killings of tens of thousands of babies every year, refuse to protect our borders, and are incessantly infringing our right to keep and bear arms. Those politicians, at the very least, stretch the Constitution far beyond the intent of the Founders. And when you start stretching the Constitution, it's bound to tear, then rip, and soon it's left in shreds.

Volunteer at a campaign for a true conservative, who will fight to defend the Constitution and will actually work to diminish the size of government, not slow it's expansion.

Whatever we get in our government we deserve, because we put them there and we fail to hold them responsible. We must begin to reclaim America by standing firm for truth, for as Edmund Burke so eloquently put it,

"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."

Ronald Reagan declared in 1964 in his A Time for Choosing speech,

“We will preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on Earth, or we will sentence them to take the last step into a thousand years of darkness."

If our generation does nothing to stop the erosion and destruction of our liberties and freedoms, we will plunge future generations into "a thousand years of darkness." We must not allow our liberties to be taken from us, for liberties once lost are not easily regained.

I’ll leave you with the ending stanza from the poem The Rising of 1776 by T.B. Read.

"Who dares?" -- This was the patriot preacher's cry,
As striding from the pulpit he came, --
"Come out with me, in Freedom's name,
For her to live, for her to die?"
A hundred hands flung up reply,
A hundred voices answered, "I!"

Recommended links:
A Time for Choosing (1964), by Ronald Reagan
The Americans Who Risked Everything, by Rush H. Limbaugh, Jr.
1776 , by David McCullough

The Longest Day

2009-06-06T02:40:00.013-04:00

On June 5, 1944, General Dwight D. Eisenhower wrote this brief note, which he then put in his pocket, where it remained for the next two days:

“Our landings in the Cherbourg-Le Havre area have failed to gain a satisfactory foothold and I have withdrawn the troops. My decision to attack at this time and place was based upon the best information available. The troops, the air, and the Navy did all that bravery and devotion to duty could do. If any blame or fault attaches to this attempt it is mine alone."

By God's Providence, this message was never sent. The sending of such a message would have signaled the defeat of the largest one-day invasionary force the world had ever seen, and the prolongation of a war that ultimately claimed the lives of over 400,000 American men and boys. The consequences of a defeat at Normandy are unthinkable. Nevertheless, the possibility of failure was apparently somewhat substantial, as evidenced by the fact that Eisenhower wrote such a note.

An Amazing Story

The events of D-Day, and the days and weeks leading up to it, are truly an amazing story. The Allies had selected Normandy as the location of the invasion in a series of conferences held throughout the year of 1943. The Germans expected the invasion to take place at Pas de Calais; had the Allies chosen that point for the invasion instead of Normandy, the results would have likely been disastrous. In the fall of 1943, as a result of the German high command's belief that Calais would be the location of the Allied landing, Hitler assigned to Gen. Erwin Rommel the task of strengthening the Atlantic Wall along the coast of France.

Operation Fortitude

The Germans believing that the attack would occur at Calais was greatly due to a highly successful deception campaign dubbed Operation Fortitude. The primary purpose of this campaign was to keep the Germans from strengthening their defenses at Normandy, by leading them to believe that the Allied invasion of France would occur at Pas de Calais. This was accomplished by a number of means. One was the leaking of false information about the location of the planned invasion. Double agents were used to send back the false information to the Nazi intelligence agency. Another tactic used was the construction of 'dummy' tanks (at left), trucks, artillery pieces, landing craft, etc. Fictitious divisions were fabricated in order to create the illusion of a larger force than actually existed. The transportation infrastructure in and around Calais was also bombed heavily during the weeks preceding the Normandy invasion.

A Fatal Mistake

Due to a dispute between Gen. Erwin Rommel and his superior, Gen. Gerd von Rundstedt, about where to locate the German armored divisions, Hitler placed almost all of the armored and Panzer divisions under his own personal command, and located them just above the Seine River, not far from where the Allies were expected to land at Calais. Rommel's stratagem was to
position the armored divisions as close to the invasion beaches as he could, while von Rundstedt wanted to hold them in reserve away from the beaches until after the invasion was underway, when they could then be used as a tremendous counter-attack. Had Rommel had his way, the results of D-Day could have been very different.

When the invasion started on the morning of the 6th, Hitler was asleep, and his staff refused to wake him. He slept until after noon, and as a result the armored divisions were not deployed until 4 o'clock that afternoon; much to late to turn the tide of the Allied forces moving inland from the beaches.

The Desert Fox

An essential component of the D-Day invasion was the unfavorable weather. Because of that, Gen. Rommel felt secure in taking a few days leave to Berlin to visit his wife for her 50th birthday. He was confident that the Allies wouldn't possibly land an invasionary force under such adverse weather conditions. Had Rommel not been away at the time of the invasion, it's possible that he would have been able to repel the Allies, or at least the invasion long enough for the Panzer divisions to arrive.

The Largest Invasion

One cannot imagine what went through the minds of the Nazi soldiers on Normandy when they saw the Allied fleet approaching. It was the largest one-day invasionary force that the world has ever seen; over 7,000 ships and landing craft, manned by over 195,000 crew; with over 132,000 troops landing on the beaches of Normandy just on that first day. By the 30th, three weeks later, over 850,000 Allied troops had landed at Normandy. The invasion of Normandy was truly an amazing feat of complex planning and preparation.

The Landing

The invasion was divided into 5 different beaches; Juno was to be taken by Canadian forces, Gold and Sword by British forces, and Utah and Omaha by U.S. forces. The landing began at 6:30 AM. The stories of courage and valor on the beaches of Normandy are truly remarkable. One such story is that of Walter D. Ehlers, whose extraordinary story can be read here, as told in the the book: Medal of Honor: Portraits of Valor Beyond the Call of Duty.

The Longest Day

Produced by Darryl Zanuck, The Longest Day (1962) is an outstanding film that brings to life the events of D-Day. Featuring an all star cast including John Wayne, Robert Mitchum, Henry Fonda, Sean Connery and Curt Jurgens, it's truely one of the best WWII films ever made. It really helps you envision what it was like at the beaches of Normandy on "The Longest Day".

Here's the trailer for the film:

Oliver North's book War Stories III provides an excellent synopsis of the war in the European theatre. It also comes with a DVD containing an episode from Oliver North's TV show War Stories.

Medal of Honor: Portraits of Valor Beyond the Call of Duty, tells the stories of 138 living or recently deceased men who were awarded the Medal of Honor for courage and valor beyond the call of duty. Each Medal of Honor recipient's story is told in a two-page format with wartime photos as well as recent photos taken for this book.

Little Tait's Preemie Fund

2009-04-01T21:22:00.001-04:00

We have a friend in Alaska that had a baby born in November, 13 weeks premature. The baby is home now and doing good but the family has to raise over $50,000 by June 3^rd to pay the doctor’s bill. I know they would appreciate your prayers & support. You can visit their website for more information about their need: www.LittleTait.com .

Misc. Pictures of The Kids

2009-03-20T17:37:00.001-04:00

Christians at the Crossroads Conference

2009-02-19T12:45:00.001-05:00

A couple of weeks ago we were blessed to be able to attend the Christians at the Crossroads conference hosted by the Botkin family in Columbus, GA. We really enjoyed hearing the different topics covered, and also getting to visit with old friends and meet new ones as well.

Thomas Jefferson Quote

2009-01-16T16:08:00.001-05:00

"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free.... it expects what never was and never will be."

~ Thomas Jefferson

Happy 16th Birthday Joseph!

2009-01-02T20:55:00.001-05:00

Christmas 2008

2008-12-26T17:49:00.002-05:00

Seth took us out Tuesday night with Kristen's parents
for Christmas.

All the adults drew names on Thanksgiving for this Christmas; that made it much easier for everyone.

Merry Christmas from the Weathers family!

Christmas Decorating

2008-12-04T20:18:00.001-05:00

Thanksgiving Pictures

2008-12-03T12:00:00.001-05:00

Here are some pictures from our long Thanksgiving week, which started on Thursday at Isaac and Christie’s house with Christie’s family, and ended Sunday night with dinner at our house with the family. Enjoy!

Christie and her sisters really did a great job preparing a Thanksgiving feast for over 25 people!

Brother Slattery enjoyed playing cards with the kids :)

Rosie with Heather and her baby Mercy

William enjoyed playing with baby Mercy!

Sunday Dinner

Not even 2 years old and already using a smart phone!

We also celebrated Granddaddy’s birthday Sunday night.

He had plenty of helping hands to open his presents with :)

Staying with the Potters

2008-11-24T20:34:00.001-05:00

A couple of months ago a movie production company called us and wanted to know if we would be willing to rent our house to a movie star who was going to be in town for about 5 weeks while they were shooting a movie. She came to look at the house and it ended up being Demi Moore! (For everyone who doesn't keep up with movie stars, we had to look her up to see who she was, too!) :) The providential timing of it led us to say yes.

The Potter's graciously opened up their home to us, so we had the privilege of staying with them for about 4 of the 5 weeks that we were out of our house. We all had a blast! :) I can't end this post without sharing this song that Mrs. Potter wrote lamenting our departure. :)

(Sung to the tune of One Vacant Chair)

Four Vacant Chairs

We will eat, but we shall miss them,
There will be 4 vacant chairs,
We shall long to hear their laughter
Wafting from the rooms upstairs.

When a day ago we gathered,
Joy was in their bright green eyes.
But the Potter girls are coming;
All the Weathers were surprised.

At our fireside, bored and lonely,
Deal the cards, 4 chairs, not 8.
Our remembrance of Steve's stories,
Comments from Joe, Luke and Kay.

How he slowly took the math test,
All throughout the long school day.
Even through his long lunch hour,
He endured what Kay might say.

True they tell such funny stories,
And the jokes come from all four.
If you want to get to know them,
Rent their house to Demi Moore.

Sleep tonight, the house is quiet;
Weathers gone to a hotel bed.
Sounds no more from late-night snacking,
mingle with the tears we shed.

We will eat, but we shall miss them.
There will be 4 vacant chairs.
We shall long to hear their laughter
Wafting from the rooms upstairs.

Leslie Potter

Demi Moore was very warm and gracious to us during her stay. She invited us to come to the set and watch them film the last scene, so we got a real behind-the-scenes look at filming a movie.

She took us on the set for a few minutes, and then we watched them film the last scene of the movie from the monitor room with the producers.

GA Civil War History Tour

2008-11-22T22:20:00.001-05:00

Last weekend we went on a GA Civil War history tour with around 90 others led by Bill Potter. We visited the Chickamauga battlefield, the Kennesaw battlefield, the Cyclorama in Atlanta, & Oakland Cemetery.

Nanny's Birthday

2008-11-22T21:03:00.001-05:00

Christians at the Crossroads - Conference

2008-11-18T22:59:00.001-05:00

Two Remarkable Days with America's Visionary Family

www.Crossroads09.com

"This two-day event will give Christians a vision to turn tumultuous times into opportunities for advancing the Kingdom of Jesus Christ.

The economy is failing. The Obama Administration will attempt to move the nation irreversibly into international socialism. The Church has lost its moral compass, and has surrendered its influence on society and culture. However, the Christian family can stand, grow, prosper, and lead during such historic times of social instability. But is the Christian family in America strong enough to rise to the challenge of the next four years? How about the darker challenges that lie beyond? What will become of the family, the church and the civil government in the 21st century?

For two enlightening and life-changing days, Geoffrey Botkin will be joined in Columbus by his remarkable family to talk about the timeless issues of family faithfulness, family strength and family leadership..." Read More

Help Misha Video

2008-10-29T16:40:00.002-04:00

The video I posted below is about Christie's family fostering a Russian boy while he is in the US for 6 months for leg amputation surgery. They've decided that they would like to adopt him, but they need $27,000 to do it. They only have a few months to raise the money because after his 16th birthday in May they won't be able to adopt him because of legal reasons. Anything you can do to help will be greatly appreciated. You can view updates about Misha here.

Misha

2008-10-29T16:39:00.001-04:00

Misha

The Grandchildren Visiting

2008-10-12T21:58:00.001-04:00

We got a call Thursday night from Christie saying that she cut her finger pretty badly on the food processor blade, so Steve and I went and got the children while Isaac took her to get stitches. Here are some pictures from their stay with us the last few days.

Government Solutions

2008-10-07T19:11:00.001-04:00

Buy here.

This week’s pictures

2008-10-04T20:27:00.001-04:00

Here’s some pictures from this week when the kids stayed with us for a few days while Isaac and Christie went to Dillard.

Happy 3rd Birthday Rosie!

2008-09-29T22:41:00.001-04:00

"Winston Churchill: The Pillars of Leadership"

2008-09-14T00:01:00.001-04:00

"Come on now all you young men, all over the world. You have not an hour to lose. You must take your places in Life's fighting line. Don't be content with things as they are. Enter upon your inheritance, accept your responsibilities. Raise the glorious flags again, advance them upon the new enemies, who constantly gather upon the front of the human army, and have only to be assaulted to be overthrown. Don't take No for an answer. Never submit to failure. Do not be fobbed off with mere personal success or acceptance. You will make all kinds of mistakes; but as long as you are generous and true, and also fierce, you cannot hurt the world or even seriously distress her."

~Never Give In; The Extraordinary Character of
Winston Churchill, by Stephen Mansfield

Excerpt From: The Valley of Vision

2008-09-05T23:02:00.002-04:00

"If I oppose the Word I oppose my Lord when he is most near;
If I receive the Word I receive my Lord wherein he is nigh.
O thou who hast the hearts of all men in thine hand,
form my heart according to the Word,
according to the image of thy Son,
So shall Christ the Word, and his Word, be my strength
and comfort."

~ The Valley of Vision

"Herein is wonder of wonders:
he came below to raise me above,
was born like me that I might become like him.
Herein is love; when I cannot rise to him he draws near on wings of grace, to raise me to himself."

~ The Valley of Vision

The Western Conservatory of the Arts and Sciences NEW DVD SERIES -- Father to Son: Manly Conversations That Can Change Culture

2008-09-01T13:38:00.001-04:00

Click on this link to view the trailer

Playing in the Sprinklers

2008-09-01T02:22:00.001-04:00

July/August Photos

2008-08-24T00:10:00.000-04:00

I can’t believe it’s been over 6 weeks since we’ve posted! We’ve been really busy lately; getting the house ready to put on the market, etc. So I’ll put all the pictures from the past few weeks into one post.

A few weeks ago we we went up to Isaac and Christie’s and took care of the kids while they went to Canada for a few days. We really had a great time! Christie has pictures from their trip here and here.

Rosie really missed her Mommy after a few days:)

A couple of weeks ago we went up to the Truelove’s to watch their children while they were at the hospital having their 4th child, Ava Faith.

Now that we’re caught up hopefully we can start posting regularly again:)