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 

______________________________________
To subscribe, change options, or unsubscribe please see the instructions at
http://listlva.lib.va.us/archives/va-hist.html