News

Kudos on 450 years
By Marco Rubio
St. Augustine Record
September 8, 2015
http://staugustine.com/opinions/2015-09-06/guest-column-sen-marco-rubio-kudos-450-years#.Ve7orBFVhBc
 
Nearly 450 years ago, Spanish settlers fulfilled their dreams of building a new world by founding the city of St. Augustine.
 
This city’s past can teach us a great deal about who we are today, both as Floridians and as Americans. But just as the theme of this celebration calls us to “find ourselves in our past,” we should also seize this opportunity to look ahead to the challenges and opportunities of the future.
 
St. Augustine’s 450 years have been filled with leaders who saw the potential the future offered. The Spanish settlers who first founded the city took on the unknown in the New World to found what would become America’s oldest city. In the 1880s, Henry Flagler looked forward and transformed St. Augustine into a destination unlike any other, leading to an economic boom that would elevate the city to a level its settlers wouldn’t have thought possible. And in the 1960s, as the nation faced changes that many thought would tear us apart, civil rights leaders chose St. Augustine as the rally point for their cause.
 
Now it is our generation’s turn to look ahead to the future. In this new century, we have the chance to expand the American Dream to reach more people than ever before. Like the Spanish settlers 450 years ago, like Henry Flagler in the 1880s and like the civil rights leaders in the 1960s, we are now facing an opportunity to take America forward and fulfill our potential to be greater than we’ve ever been.
 
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