“Do You Believe In Miracles?”

by Kerry Thomas

February 19, 2008

There are dates in American history that are so seminal to us as a nation that they are forever burned in our collective memories. July 4, 1776. December 7, 1941. February 22, 1980. September 11, 2001.

February 22, 1980?

It is a day that those of us who experienced it will never forget. It is a day 52 of our fellow Americans wish they could have experienced live. For them, it was almost as good on tape. It is a day when the world looked to America and couldn’t help but smile at what we were able to accomplish. It is a day when every American celebrated the fact that we were Americans.

February 22, 1980. A day when 20 young men, from Minnesota and Wisconsin and Massachusetts and Colorado and North Dakota and Kentucky, working together, overcame impossible odds and achieved a modern day miracle.

America was in a malaise. Jimmy Carter was in the White House. The cold war was still going strong. America’s economy was in the toilet. Rampant inflation. 18% interest rates. And 52 Americans were being held hostage by radical Islamic fundamentalists in Iran.

In the middle of all this, 20 young Americans faced off against an indomitable enemy. They weren’t expected to prevail.

But prevail they did – and in so doing restored a sense of pride and patriotism that hadn’t been felt by America in more than 30 years. What they did on that cold Friday night in that upstate New York town restored Americans’ innate sense of optimism, and gave every American a sense of patriotism we hadn’t had a reason to express in a long time.

It may have been just a sporting event, but the February 22, 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey team’s victory over the USSR, en route to their winning the gold medal against Finland, was truly a miracle on ice.