Word: patriotsã
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Dates: during 2002-2002
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...flag-flying holidays, coming more than a month before summer kick-off of Memorial Day and without the mid-summer revelry of the Fourth of July, but it is unique and historical, and as such Massachusetts is proud to let school kids free and marathoners run wild to celebrate Patriots?? Day every April. To explore one Patriots?? Day tradition of battle reenactments, FM ventured back in time and out to the suburbs, hoping to uncover the motivations of tri-corner-hatted men who wake up at dawn and fire off rounds of gunpowder in memory...
This year, Patriots?? Day morning was gray, rainy and cold, but 5,000 spectators still lined the edges of Lexington Green to watch a reenactment of the Battle of Lexington. Seasoned spectators stood on ladders and drowsy yet curious small children perched on their fathers’ shoulders to get a good look at the action. Coveted viewing positions were occupied by 4 a.m. At 6 a.m. sharp, a Lexington Minute Man playing messenger Samuel Prescott rode up to the green to deliver the message that the British were, indeed, coming. Soon after, about 120 reenactors portraying British...
Excitement about Patriots?? Day runs high throughout Lexington. “You should arrive before 5 a.m. I know it’s early, but people start getting there at 3:30 a.m.,” advises Wayne McCarthy, executive officer of the Minute Men. Most of the younger attendees whined about the early hour, but once the gunpowder ignited, everyone was wide awake. And on Patriots?? Day, everyone is an expert. One older man quizzed the kids next to him about battle-specifics and then knowingly informed them how one of the Minute Men died...
...Godfrey says. “It’s different from acting, because you get out there and feel something more of what those men must have felt then.” So he now riles up the rebellious crowd portraying Sam Adams the night before Patriots?? Day, and Ebenezer Bowman in the battle. “I’m actually British, so I should be on the other side,” Godfrey says...
Harvard students probably don’t think twice about the events behind the plaques and markers that adorn this campus. But next Patriots?? Day, student will be just a pre-dawn bike ride away from witnessing history in reenactment form. The Lexington Minute Men will be on the green—as they were more than 225 years...