Ron Sykowski

We were so disorganized and people don't understand we were not a unified group of colonies.

We were at each other's throats, literally, and sometimes we were disputing boundaries between colonies.

There's a multitude of disputes that we had, and it was through working together and focusing on what they had in common that brought the colonies together.

And that's something we need to look at, learn from that, and imply it today.

We planted a liberty tree, a new species.

It was a Mexican red oak, and it has flaming red leaves at certain times of the year.

And it's planted on the grounds of the Heritage Museum.

Tejano ranchers provided beef and horses to the 13 colonies.

The Spanish king would have loved to see England fall big time.

Well, history emanates from not only locally, but nationally and internationally.

If you don't preserve all of that history,

for future generations to learn from, we're going to make the same mistakes over and over again.

I kid my fellow historians that history is the only time you can gossip and get by with it.

No country in the 20th century has ever been as economically dominant as the United States was coming out of World War II.