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Remember Mother Earth
Celebrating Earth Day With Your Children
By Teri Brown
Earth Day has become a holiday for everyone. No matter what your cultural heritage, religious affiliation or political beliefs, Earth Day is an event we can all celebrate together as occupants of planet earth.
Each spring, folks around the nation join together to celebrate a day designed to raise environmental concerns to the forefront of our national conscience. It has become a day of education and a chance to teach our children about environmental issues as well as how to be good caretakers and stewards of the earth's resources.
In the 1960s, as a generation of college students refused to blindly accept the morals and traditions set forth by the previous generation, the consequences of years of environmental abuses became evident. Pollution scored the skies of our major cities, plants and animals were becoming extinct in unheard of numbers and our natural resources like oil and timber were dwindling.
Senator Gaylord Nelson from Wisconsin was troubled by the fact that in spite of these concerns, the state of our environment was a political non-issue. After Nelson spoke to Attorney General Robert Kennedy, President Kennedy decided to go on a five-day national conservation tour. Though the tour didn't have the impact that Nelson had planned, it was the seed that eventually grew to become Earth Day.
Six years later, Nelson was still speaking across the country on environmental issues. College campuses had begun educating others on the Vietnam War by holding teach-ins. This gave Nelson an idea: Why not hold a national protest and teach-in concerning the environment? In 1969, Nelson announced that in the spring of 1970 there would be a nationwide demonstration on behalf of the environment, and he invited everyone to participate. The response was nothing short of amazing and the first Earth Day emerged. Twenty-five years later, in 1995, President Clinton awarded Nelson the Presidential Medal of Freedom and dubbed him the father of Earth Day.
