Fourth of July event to help preserve historic Estero house

Our past is everything. It is how we have come to find ourselves in the present and lays the foundation for the roads we take into the future. History is more than just the important people, dates, and events we memorize and too soon forget in school. It is part of us all. It gives us a vision of how people lived, the trials they faced and how they survived them. History is also how we will be remembered. It is the basis of legacy.

There are few “once in a lifetime” moments. The founding of the United States of America was one that occurred in the 1770s and 80s that gave a people a nation and the world a shining city on a hill. Some of these moments are missed; risks we never take, a job we pass up, a business we don't start, that time you didn't speak up when you know you should have. Our founders seized the moment presented to them.

The American Revolution could not have happened as it did at any other point in history and many knew that should they pass it by it would never happen. Many continental leaders attempted appeasement, petitions, and olive branches to stave off what they thought would be disastrous events that would follow revolution. Truth be told the world as we know it today would be a very different place without the ideals of liberty proven to be successful in the founding of our nation and the eventual organization of our constitutional republic. It was a small group of founders who took a stand in writing the Declaration of Independence. Instead of appeasement and apathy they turned to grievances and disavowed the false nature of tyranny on our shores.

Here in Southwest Florida we have our own rendezvous with destiny. Our once-in-a-lifetime moment presented. Too often history is lost. Especially in a place where it is not found in towering stone castles, great walls, and momentous monuments like in other parts of the world. It is humble, like the founding of America. In the Village of Estero there is a small house. Not a house where someone who did something important lived nor a house where something important happened. It was home to a family that pioneered the frontier that we now all call home. Without people like the Alvarez-Smith family, regular people hunting, fishing, and carving a life in a hot, humid, mosquito-infested, wet, swampy, and harsh outcropping in the Florida Everglades our slice of paradise would probably have never come to pass.

This Fourth of July we should not only remember the founding of our nation but those who laid the foundation for where we live today. The Estero Historical Society is raising funds to save the Alvarez-Smith House with gracious support from community leaders and I hope you'll join me. I'll also be reading the Declaration of Independence at The Estero Historical Society in Estero Community Park on July 4th at 9 a.m. Stay for watermelon after and make your once in a lifetime moment mark in history!

Jacob Winge is a local historian.