Every year I feel like watching a movie in the afternoon of Independence Day during the heat of the day, before the day cools off for an evening family barbecue. But it never happens, because of the following obstacles. The movie/musical 1776 tells the story of Independence Day, but it has swearing and I don’t like the way it portrays some of the Founding Fathers. A More Perfect Union doesn’t hold my younger children’s attention, and although it involves some of the Founding Fathers, it tells the story of what happened over a decade later, with the signing of the Constitution, in 1787, not 1776.

I like John Adams, but it has a few objectionable parts. Then there’s Johnny Tremain, but my kids have watched it a lot so it’s lost its magic and it’s not about a real person.

So I am happy to announce that I finally found a movie! It’s about the Revolutionary War, it’s clean, and it’s about a real person. I don’t know why I hadn’t heard of it before. It’s called Swamp Fox. It’s actually not a movie, but a TV series produced by Walt Disney. I heard about it from Zion Vision http://zionvision.com . Swamp Fox was the nickname of Francis Marion, who Walt Disney claims was the biggest hero of the Revolutionary War, next to George Washington. My love of learning and core phase children watched it last Sunday afternoon and thoroughly enjoyed it. They like singing the theme song, “Swamp Fox, Swamp Fox, tail on his hat. Nobody knows where the swamp fox’s at.”

I actually read about him in one of Richard Maybury’s Uncle Eric books, the one on World War I. Maybury said that the Swamp Fox represents the spirit of guerrilla warfare and independent thinking. I haven’t watched the whole series and studied a biography about him, so I don’t know how true the series is to his real life. He is the character that the Mel Gibson movie, The Patriot, is  partly based on. I guess that movie could be an Independence Day movie classic as well, but I have not seen it. I can’t vouch for its family-friendliness. I think it’s R-rated.