Opinion : Yet one more reason to remember America\'s original Patriot\'s Day

Today's bombings at the Boston Marathon took place during Boston's official "Patriot's Day" celebration, and just four days before the 18th anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing, when Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols set of a large fertilizer bomb in a truck outside the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, killing 168, including dozens of children. That event took place on the original Patriot's Day -- April 19.

Events that took place near Boston during this week 238 years ago, in 1775, are the reason that Massachusetts residents still celebrate our very first original national holiday: Patriot's Day.

Historians remember the original Patriot's Day, April 19, 1776, as the day the first American died in what soon after his death would become known as the Revolutionary War.

New Englanders continue to celebrate Patriot's Day, not on the 19th, but on the third Monday of each April, with re-enactments of battles at the Concorde Bridge and other places.

It's noteworthy that the latest terrorist attack also took place on Patriot's Day; in the future, when we remember whatever it is we eventually will label the Boston Marathon attack, our nation will also remember, again: Patriot's Day.

At 2 a.m. on the first Patriot's Day, 238 years ago, a Massachusetts farmer -- described below in the immortal words of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow :

And one was safe and asleep in his bed
Who at the bridge would be first to fall,
Who that day would be lying dead,
Pierced by a British musket ball

-- would become the first to die for his nation's freedom.

Some more Americans-- at least two, according to the TV "Special Report" today -- have died in America's seemingly perpetual fight for freedom this Patriot's Day.

Once again, as we did on April 19, 1995, and 9/11 and too many other dates from recent memory that are too painful to forget, when we remember the 2013 Boston Marathon, we will remember those who died, and those who responded to help their fellow Americans.

We will remember the heroes -- the first responders who put themselves in harm's way. We will remember the victims. We will remember our enemies, and the variety of people who have found something to hate about America over the last 237 years.

And we will remember the Patriots -- from the first ones that inspired Paul Revere and the poet who immortalized his Midnight ride -- to the less familiar names who ride in 2013 to ensure that that spark of freedom that first flew from the horseshoes of Paul Revere's steed on that first Patriot's Day to burn today.