Part of a seven-part series exploring what 100+ independently written letters from America’s business community reveal about the country and its people at 250. Read Part 1 here.
By Sarah Bonk and Chip York
When we started reading the Birthday Letters to America, we expected references to America’s history, ideals, and accomplishments. We found all of those. But we also noticed something else: when writers tried to explain what America meant to them, they kept talking about the people.
Not politicians or famous figures. Truck drivers. Teachers. Factory workers. Farmers. Small business owners. Nurses. Volunteers. Military families. Neighbors.
Roughly 160 million Americans go to work in this country. Almost none of them will ever appear in a history book. But the people writing these letters want us to hear their stories.
What one company learned in 50 years
Shannon Roers is the CEO of ROERS, a North Dakota construction and development company that turns 50 the same year America turns 250.
Her father, ROERS founder Jim Roers, was working construction to pay his way through college, planning to return to the family farm. The agricultural economy of the late 1970s made that impossible. He looked at these difficult circumstances, she writes, not as the end of a dream but as the beginning of a new one. She writes, “One of the greatest gifts this country offers is the freedom to change course when life changes around you. It rewards people who are willing to work, learn, innovate, and keep moving forward.”
But the part of her letter that lingers isn't the founding story. It's everyone who came after: more than 125 employees today, and hundreds more over the last five decades who built careers and friendships there. Every year, she writes, ROERS employees coach youth sports, serve on nonprofit boards, mentor students, and lend a hand wherever it's needed — acts that "may not always be visible, but they strengthen the communities we call home."
"Strong communities are built not only by government or business, but by people who choose to show up — for their neighbors, their schools, their churches, their nonprofits, and one another. … The American story has never been written by a handful of extraordinary people. It has been written by millions of ordinary people who chose to contribute where they stood."
When the lights come on
Angela Phillips begins her letter at the founding: two hundred and fifty years ago, a bold idea was born, that ordinary people could build an extraordinary nation through freedom, hard work, self-government, and opportunity. Then she brings it to her own shop floor at Phillips Tube Group, the small Ohio manufacturing company she leads.
"Every morning, when the lights come on in our shop and our team gets to work, we see the American story in action. We see skilled hands creating products, solving problems, and building something of value. We see neighbors working alongside neighbors. We see the dignity of labor and the pride that comes from making things that matter."
She ends her letter with gratitude — for the freedoms that let entrepreneurs take risks, for the workers who show up with determination and skill, and for the customers, suppliers, and partners who remind her that America's greatest resource has always been its people.
What the road knows
The American Trucking Associations’ letter traces its industry through the Arsenal of Democracy, the interstate highway system, hurricanes, wildfires, and COVID — but the letter's real subject is the person behind the wheel.
"That commitment is not measured in speeches, monuments or headlines. It is measured in a driver climbing into the cab before dawn. A diesel engine turning over in the cold. A dispatcher solving the impossible. A mechanic keeping the wheels safe. A warehouse crew loading one more trailer. A family waiting at home while a driver crosses another state line to make sure another family has what it needs."
The letter is candid that this work is mostly invisible until it stops. When hurricanes struck, trucking hauled relief. When COVID brought daily life to a halt, America looked out the window and saw truckers still moving — groceries, medicine, masks, ventilators, vaccines.
"Trucking knows America up close. We know its truck stops and city streets, its mountain passes and river crossings, its factory gates and farm roads. We know the dignity of work, the value of service, and the quiet patriotism of keeping promises."
Behind every product on the shelf
Melissa Hockstad, CEO of the Consumer Brands Association, begins somewhere even more familiar: a breakfast table, a particular cereal box, the soap her mother kept by the kitchen sink, and the coffee that meant the day had officially begun.
What strikes her about her industry isn't its scale or economic weight. It's the constancy — and the people who make that possible. The products that have been present in American homes through wartime and peace, recessions and recoveries, historic moments, and unremarkable Tuesdays didn't get there on their own.
"Standing behind every product on the shelf are the people who made it possible: the farmer and the supplier, the scientist and the engineer, the worker on the line and the driver who gets products where they need to go, and the corner grocer and larger retailer. … People who show up, do the work and take real pride in what they produce."
She's met those people across the country, in family businesses now in their third and fourth generations, in century-old companies, in start-ups. Her letter closes with thanks for the people who carry that responsibility forward every day.
The people who never make the headlines
The Wichita Regional Chamber makes the same case for an entire city. Wichita sits in the heart of the country, the letter says, but has never seen itself as a place that watches history pass by. It's a community of builders — aircraft, businesses, neighborhoods, careers, families, and futures.
“We see it in the small business owner who opens the doors before sunrise. We see it in the manufacturer training the next generation. We see it in the teacher preparing students for a world that will look different than the one we now know. We see it in the volunteer giving time to make a neighborhood stronger. We see it in the young professional choosing to build a life here. We see it in the military family making Wichita home. … These moments may not always make national headlines, but they are our foundation.”
The chamber is direct about what business contributes to that. Business is more than commerce, the letter argues: at its heart it creates opportunity, gives people a path to provide for their families, brings people together across backgrounds, and reminds us that progress requires trust and a shared commitment to something bigger than ourselves.
The American story has millions of authors
Five organizations writing independently — a family construction company in North Dakota, a manufacturer in Ohio, a national trucking association, a consumer brands association in Virginia, a chamber of commerce in Kansas — all reached for the same idea. The ones who open the doors before sunrise, turn on the shop lights, drive the truck, teach the class, coach the team, and show up for a neighbor. Those are the ones who built this nation and keep it running.
Asked what America means at 250, these letters didn't bring up arguments or institutions or famous names. They reached for the person down the street.
Two hundred and fifty years in, that may be the most hopeful thing about this country: it was built by people whose names we'll never know, and it's still being built the same way, this morning, in a few hundred thousand places at once.
Sarah Bonk is a civic entrepreneur and the founder/CEO of Business for America. She spent over 20 years leading strategy, design, and organizational change at Apple and American Electric Power. Today, she works with business leaders to help fix what’s broken in American politics.
Chip York leads marketing and communications for Business for America, building coalitions across the business community. His 20+ years in global marketing and creative communications span agency leadership at Ketchum and in-house work at The Coca-Cola Company.
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