From left, DAR members Connie Clonch, Meredith Wait and Amy Elmore put up the Constitution Week display in the front of Dickinson & Wait Craft Gallery, with the help of Connie’s husband, Charles Clonch, last Friday afternoon. Tabitha Johnston

SHEPHERDSTOWN — The anniversary of the signing of the U.S. Constitution on Sept. 17, 1787 finishes its week of commemoration today, both nationwide and in Shepherdstown.

Two such commemorative events in town were the 18th Annual Tom E. Moses Memorial Lecture on the U.S. Constitution and the Pack Horse Ford Chapter, National Society Daughters of the American Revolution’s annual display in the Dickinson & Wait Craft Gallery front window.

According to Dickinson & Wait Craft Gallery owner Meredith Wait, the weeklong display has been happening since she joined the Pack Horse Ford Chapter a decade ago.

“We’ve been doing this for maybe 10 years — every year! I think I’ve been a member of the DAR for 10 years, as well,” Wait said last Friday afternoon, as she helped oversee the placement of the Constitution Week display on the evolution from the Magna Carta to the Constitution.

“I love it. I’ve been a flag-waving American all my life. It’s what my parents taught me — I get all weepy,” Wait said. “The Constitution’s our most important document. We need to shore it up.”

Ornstein

Fellow chapter members Amy Elmore and Connie Clonch, along with Connie’s husband, Charles Clonch, worked with Wait on the window display which, according to Constitution Week Committee Chair Connie, would hopefully attract a lot of attention.

“Constitution Week is usually September 17th to the 23rd. September 17th is the day the Constitution was signed — it’s a very important date!” Connie said, mentioning the national organization encourages its chapters to arrange for local churches to ring their bells at 4 p.m. on Sept. 17 and to ask local businesses if they could put up window displays for Constitution Week, similar to the gallery’s.

“The Constitution seems like it’s really even more important than usual!” Connie said. “So, we thought [with our display], ‘let’s do something that shows how it started out.'”

Norman Ornstein, the special speaker for the 18th Annual Tom E. Moses Memorial Lecture on the U.S. Constitution, “Threats to American Democracy and the Constitution,” in the Robert C. Byrd Center for Congressional History and Education on Tuesday night, wholeheartedly agreed with Connie’s view on the significance of the Constitution today.

“We’re eight weeks away from an election. We don’t know where we’re going, in so many elements with our society and our political process,” Ornstein, who is a nationally-known expert on the U.S. Congress and emeritus scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, said. “I believe we face the biggest crisis in our Constitutional system and broadly in our society, since possibly the Civil War.”

Ornstein noted that, regardless of whether or not Donald Trump had become a U.S. president, the nation would likely have still ended up polarized, due to the growing wage gap, along with societal differences between those in rural and urban areas. All in all, he said he still believes in the use of the Constitution and how the U.S. political system worked under it for over two centuries.

“It’s a political system that could still work, but we’re moving further away from figuring out how to make things work,” Ornstein said. “When society divides into enemy camps, sectarian violence often follows. We have to fear that possibility! It doesn’t happen overnight, it’s a slide. I’m worried about the short-term, as well, because of what we face in just about eight weeks. We don’t know what’s going to happen, and lots of things are going to happen in the next few weeks. But there are many things that can happen that can alter outcomes.”