Pobie Johnston is an American archetype. She may as well have been born on the Fourth of July.

She comes from Philadelphia, the birthplace of the United States, the cradle of liberty.

Like most Americans, she is a descendant of immigrants -- her father was from Poland, her mother from Romania. They taught Pobie and her two brothers to love America.

"When my parents got here they thought they landed in heaven," Johnston said. "I look at photos of us as kids and someone always had a flag in their hand. My parents appreciated being here so much."

Each Sunday the family dressed up and visited a Philadelphia landmark of American history.

They saw Independence Hall, where the founding fathers wrote the Declaration of Independence. They saw the Liberty Bell, which rang on July 8, 1776, to call all who heard it to come and witness the first public reading of the Declaration. They saw the house where Betsy Ross purportedly sewed the first American flag.

During the Great Depression Johnston embraced an American mindset: Pull yourself up by your bootstraps.

"We lived in an apartment that had a toilet but no tub. Once a week or so my mother would give us a nickel and we'd go down the street to the public bathhouse," she said. "I didn't think we were poor. I thought we were doing what had to be done."

World War II broke out in 1941 and both her brothers served. Pobie worked seven days a week in a war plant, but enlisted in the Women's Auxiliary Army Corps when she reached the required age of 21. In the WAACs, people stopped calling her by her real name, Dahlia, and started calling her Pobie, short for her maiden name, Paubionsky.

She was put on a train to Daytona Beach, Fla., for six weeks of training. But the Army had no uniforms or shoes for the WAACs, so they marched in the sand in the high heels they wore when they arrived.

In Fort Sill, Okla., she was a cook. During that time one of her brothers, a bombadier with the 8th Air Force, was killed during a raid over Germany.

Johnston was sent to Fort Lee, Va., where she managed Army service records. At the end of the war she handled the discharge papers of hundreds of soldiers at Army bases in Arkansas.

After the war she married and in 1957 moved to Stamford.

In 1960 she and her husband, a hotel manager, left Stamford for a short time so he could take a job in Maine. On July 4 of that year, the nation inaugurated the American flag that included a 50th star for Hawaii, the last state.

"There was to be a party in the hotel and people from the air base in Portland, Maine, were coming. They told us that the new flag was going to be placed on top of the mountain in Maine where the sun first hits the United States, then it was to be taken down and flown to Hawaii in time for the first ray of sun to hit Hawaii," Johnston said. "They were flying ahead of the sun. You really felt like you were a part of American history that day."

Soon after, the Johnstons returned to Stamford. Pobie got involved in the city's Democratic Party and worked on the 1961 reelection campaign of Mayor J. Walter Kennedy.

Johnston then worked for the Citizens Action Council, which helped ensure that federal money designated for Stamford's urban redevelopment was used according to plan. From 1973 to 1975 she was the executive aide to Mayor Frederick Lenz.

She ran for mayor three times in Stamford, a city that has never been led by a woman, last as an independent candidate in 1988. She also worked as vice president of the Southwestern Area Commerce and Industry Association. Now 90, she has remained active in Stamford politics behind the scenes.

"I'm a student of government," she said. "I think our form of government is powerful. We elect people to represent us and they govern according to the Constitution we adopted."

Schools and civic groups ask her to speak from time to time. Last month, on Flag Day, she addressed Stamford's Knights of Columbus St. Augustine Council No. 41 during a ceremony to honor some sixth-graders for their essays on the flag. Someone in the audience contacted The Advocate to say how people were moved by Johnston's speech.

What did she say?

"We are the descendants of immigrants from all over the world, living together under one flag," Johnston said. "The Pledge of Allegiance to the flag starts with `I.' It says `I pledge allegiance.' Not `we.' Not the people who wrote the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution. `I.'

That's significant, Johnston said.

"Words matter. When I say `I pledge,' that's me. I cannot leave my pledge to others," she said. "I say it freely out loud and it's heard by everyone standing around me. It's a solemn oath to the republic. It's not to a dictator or an emperor or a king or a family who claims a divine right to rule. It's to the republic, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."

The preamble to the Constitution explains the goals of the republic -- justice, tranquility, the blessings of liberty -- when all the "I's" come together to form the "we," she said.

"The Constitution starts, `We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union.' That's why we have elections, to make things better, to see that we still are carrying out what a republic does. It's a responsibility. If we each take responsibility and work toward a common goal, it succeeds."

It's a good message for America's 236th birthday.

At the end of the Constitutional Convention, after the founding fathers wrote the document that establishes the powers of the federal government, "someone asked Benjamin Franklin, `What have you wrought?' " Johnston said. "Franklin answered, `A republic. If you can keep it.' "

angela.carella@scni.com; 203-964-2296.