To the Virginia History online forum:
The Army leaves Fort Monroe in September. Some who follow the planning for
post-Army Fort Monroe might want to see some recent opinion coverage. (I
apologize that in this case, politics and Virginia history are inseparable.)
On Nov. 28, in a headnote to an editorial headlined "Make Fort Monroe a
national park," the editors of the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot declared:
"Continued dithering serves no purpose. The storied Army installation is too
important to the nation's history to be treated this way." The editorial
itself (http://hamptonroads.com/2010/11/make-fort-monroe-national-park)
began, "Perhaps it's time for a presidential proclamation to add Fort Monroe
to the national park system."
Most national park advocates, including me, don't call for making all of Old
Point Comfort a national park. Instead, we advocate a self-sustaining,
revenue-generating, taxpayer-unburdening Grand Public Place for everybody,
built upon the foundation of a substantial national park unit that -- and
here's the conflict -- embraces much of the surrounding national historic
landmark land.
Most of Virginia's leaders want to overdevelop that national historic
landmark. The analogy to casinos threatening Gettysburg -- or to
subdivisions that now cannot threaten Monticello, thanks to wise
arrangements there -- is inexact, but germane.
On Jan. 13 (http://hamptonroads.com/2011/01/park-services-time-ft-monroe),
the Pilot's editors urged decision makers to "think big" about the need for
a suitably large national park -- one with "sufficient land ... set aside
... to protect views of the Chesapeake Bay integral to understanding the
fort's role in American history."
But even the Pilot's editors don't understand that it is the Virginia
congressional delegation, not the National Park Service, that really
decides. And that delegation, plus state and local leaders in both parties,
plus the editors of the other local daily, choose narrow parochialism --
which, ironically, actually yields less enrichment, even if you only define
enrichment in terms of dollars.
Virginia's leaders now plan to call parts of the moated fortress a national
park, and then to do their will -- under certain restraints -- with the rest
of the Old Point Comfort national historic landmark. Of course, nobody ever
planned to ruin the moated fortress anyway.
An op-ed
(http://www.dailypress.com/news/opinion/dp-news-oped-corneliussen-0116-20110115,0,897921.story)
that I published two Sundays ago in the Newport News Daily Press explains my
view of how things now stand. It begins: "Soon an American cultural disaster
will almost certainly engulf post-Army Fort Monroe, a national treasure with
international importance."
Last year, the local PBS people came to my house and shot a lot of footage
of me talking, and then used lots of Fort Monroe photos in assembling a
three-minute-long clip showing the stakes at Fort Monroe:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=27e_85dm8s4
No doubt my citing my own op-ed and that YouTube clip constitutes shameless
self-promotion. But it also constitutes the best, most direct way I know to
warn lovers of Virginia history about the once-in-a-millennium American
cultural disaster now unfolding in the commonwealth.
The only way to save Fort Monroe now will be to attract national attention
that could conceivably shame Virginia's leaders out of their narrow -- and
ironically, financially counterproductive -- parochialism.
Steven T. Corneliussen
Poquoson
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