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1969 Annual Report Town of Lexington Lexington, Massachusetts "Two giant steps forward for Mankind" The Cover For the third successive year, Philip B. Parsons has drawn the cover for Lexington's annual town report. Mr. Parsons is well known in Lexington as a commercial artist. He and Mrs. Parsons have long been active in the Lexington Arts and Crafts Society and Mr. Parsons was its president in 1937- 1938. A frequent participant in exhi- bitions throughout eastern Massachu- setts Mr. Parsons' one -man show at the Cary Memorial Library in December, 1969 was his most recent one. Two Giant Steps Forward for Mankind Knowledge that the bi- centennial of 1775 is only five years away ought to remind citizens that 1975 and 1976 will celebrate a double revolution. When the thirteen colonies declared their independence from England they sought econ- omic and political freedom. Of itself that could have been just another revolution with self interest as the primary motive. What gave grandeur to the resistance which Lexington's citizens offered on the Common to King George's soldiers on April 19, 1775, was that out of it evolved the lofty philosophy that all men were created equal and were endowed by their Creator to the right to life, liberty and the pur- suit of happiness. Implicit in it all was the responsi- bility enjoined upon the new nation to create a society where the lowliest could live in the tonic air of self respect. The Declaration of Independence was for its time no less epic in concept, with no less difficult an objective than were the modern plans to land a man on the moon. That the nation has not yet reached all its goals set forth in the Declaration is painfully obvious. That the concept, nevertheless, resulted in a giant step forward for mankind is indeed true. Now almost two hundred years later America's great unmet challenge is to bring to full flower the noble con- cept which the Declaration of Independence so eloquently voiced.