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helping to preserve this wonderful lifestyle we are now blessed to enjoy. Labeling concerned citizens who have not yet been given the chance to speak as “ostriches,” can only result in putting an end to logical and constructive dialog.
To the Editor:
Rappahannock County is unusual because we enjoy a feeling of community and sense of family.
That is a primary reason for those who were born here to have stayed and for those who have left, to come back.
It’s a primary reason for living here regardless or origin and for buying and moving here from those other nameless, formless, anonymous places which are a-roar with activity night and day. We’re a county which can still sleep.
If we accede to the demands of those who see us as a corridor to get from there to there to there — who would use us as a means to an end — then we’ll lose this unique identity. Nature has given us rare beauty. In the interest of stewardship let us preserve it.
Our greatest distinction now stems from our pride in our difference, which other beautiful areas have compromised. Of course we will continue to grow', but slowly, and in an orderly manner, according to our own, not others’ needs, and without becoming a corridor county.
Let our neighbors who have the dubious benefits of rapid growth — of industries, commercial enterprises, and unceasing fast food feederies become hosts to the semis. If they choose to alter their lives, they are free to do so, but don’t permit them to inflict corridor status on us.
We will plan for our future, — gradually — and effectively. We do not need a character re-make, a physical facelift. We don’t need trashed roads, more noise from rumbling vehicles, large law enforcement staffs to patrol transient activities, cuts, over-passes, clover leaves and underpasses, more lights — to destroy our sense of oneness and our independence.
We don’t need anonymity. We do need the freedom to remain Rappahannock. My grandmother used to say, “You can’t compromise with the devil.” But that was a long time ago. Maybe it should have been, “with regional road planners.”
HOWARD R. SWA1M
Flint Hill
Preserve
MITZIE YOUNG
Washington
92.9%