O.K. and Betty Alexander:

Betty and O.K. Alexander relax in the glider at their home near Blountsville as they cradle the flag in anticipation of the coming Fourth of July weekend. O.K Alexander qualifies as a card-carrying yankee doodle dandy. He is the sixth-generation descendent of John Witherspoon, signer of the Declaration of Independence and sixth president of the then College of New Jersey, now Princeton University.

Witherspoon emigrated to the U.S. to assume the presidency of the college in 1768. He had 12 children by two different wives. Only one child, a daughter, survived to have children of her own, this perpetuating the family line, and making possible Alexander’s status as a descendent.

Alexander’s family moved to Alabama relatively recently when his grandmother and grandfather came from New York in the early 1920s. His grandfather came to Birmingham to work at Continental Gin Co., where he was employed as an engineer.

Alexander said he is a member of an organization made up of descendants of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. They meet three times annually at a site of historic significance in one of the original 13 colonies to celebrate their heritage as well as to carry out various projects of historical significance.

At the last annual meeting, Alexander picked up an assignment: to locate the replica of the Liberty Bell (every state has one, whether they know it or not) and to conduct a bell-ringing ceremony at exactly 2 p.m. Eastern Standard Time on the Fourth of July each year. The ceremony consists of tapping the bell 13 times – simultaneously with the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia, along with the other states who have located their bells and are thus able to participate.

Alexander figures the bell is somewhere in Montgomery. If he’s lucky, the secretary of state will know exactly where it is, he said. In addition to a bell-ringing ceremony in Montgomery, Betty Alexander is thinking of introducing the idea for Blount County’s next Fourth of July celebration. Or perhaps the one after that, since this one is only three days away.

Commenting on the Revolutionary War period, Alexander said he’s amazed the American colonists ever managed to win the war with Britain, being continually undermanned and ill-equipped. “The American forces were made up of mainly volunteer militias,” he said. “If a battle was imminent and the odds weren’t good, the militias often picked up and went home,” he laughed.

Alexander works as an agricultural drip irrigation consultant for large-scale cotton and vegetable farmers, with accounts in Alabama, Tennesssee, Georgia, and Arkansas.