On being a new US citizen

After many years of association with the United States of America, I have finally obtained US citizenship. I was sworn in on February 11th 2008 at the Fairfax County office of USCIS.
My links with this country are perhaps older than me! My parents met many years before my birth in an air-raid shelter during an 8th Air Force raid on a nearby rail yard. Both my parents' villages were liberated by Patton's IIIrd Army in 1944. Not only was my childhood full of tales about these episodes, but as a child, I used to play war with a US flag, a helmet and fatigues all strictly G I.
Later on, I would admire US bands at our festivals, watch F80 Sabres take off from the many US bases in the region and visit the huge US cemetary at Hamm in Luxembourg, as well as the St Mihiel US WW I monument, barely 30 miles from home.
Sgt Charles Holmes and his family, from Little Rock Arkansas, had the good idea to become my grandmother's next door neighbor in 1965 and teach me English. He was stationned at nearby Chambley AFB.
In 1971 my brother Patrick and I decided to go to the US on our own. We spent three months driving from NYC to maine and then on to Chicago, St Paul, Salt lake, and San Francisco. We drove back to DC on Labor day, even going through Petersburg, VA. where my future wife, Becky lived at the time.
From 1973 to 1975 I taught at BSU in Indiana, and then got married in 1975 in Colonial Heights, VA.

But that was only in the modern era! My US roots go much further.....In 1870. My great grandpa, Pierre Cippe, was caught in the Franco-Prussian war in the small village of Oberdorf. Like all Lorrains, he was forced to become German after the province was annexed by the Kaiser. His 5 brothers and sister decided to leave rather than being Germans in the 1880, but not before the family was forced to change is name to Zipp. Pierre Zipp begat my grandmother, who begat my father who begat ...me. I remember great grandpa Zipp who survived 3 wars and changed nationality 4 times!
His siblings settled in Minnesota taking advantage of the Homestead act. Except for one, Michel Zipp, the others farmed around St Cloud and Little falls. The second generation moved to the San Francisco bay area for the war effort around 1942. Their descendants are still in California, from San Mateo to Sacramento, Fairfield, Roseville and Vacaville.

Now I have joined this great Nation, whose Constitution is more directly linked to the philosophers of the Enlightenment than the French Constitution.I have joined the 303 million very diverse people under the Star Spangled Banner. Following my early hero, John F. Kennedy, the question now is: What can I do for this country?