> brought secretly onshore at night and > buried at Fort Monroe in Hampton Please forgive what may seem a grossly technical bit of nitpickery, but for important present-moment reasons, with the Army leaving Fort Monroe next year, it's always necessary, in my view, to avoid overstating Hampton's geographical ownership stake in Fort Monroe. Granted, it is absolutely true that the two four-century histories -- that of Hampton and that of Point Comfort (later Old Point Comfort, site of Fort Monroe beginning in about the 1820s) -- are intertwined. But it was only after more than a third of a millennium, ca. 1950 (and well after 1942), that Fort Monroe came to fall within Hampton's newly expanded city boundaries. This clarification is important because -- and here I must lapse into sound-bite-speak, for which I also ask forgiveness -- the federal base-closure law is an idiot. In effectively calling for the donation of any closing Army post to the nearest locality for what it calls "redevelopment," the law does not distinguish a national treasure from a humdrum Fort Drab in a cornfield. That's a big part of why financially (and culturally) counterproductive overdevelopment still threatens post-Army Fort Monroe. Virginia's disappointingly incomplete and shallow civic (and, for that matter, scholarly) discussion of first principles concerning the post-Army Fort Monroe challenge continues to skip key questions almost entirely. Right now the most important of these mainly unaddressed questions is, Why are Virginia leaders, finally having admitted that some sort of pays-its-own-way national park is needed, still refusing to grant ownership of even a small amount of Old Point Comfort's land to the National Park Service? That question is not unrelated to the preeminent unaddressed question, dodged for five years now by Virginia leaders from Gov. Tim Kaine (D) to Gov. Bob McDonnell (R) to Hampton U. President Bill Harvey: To what extent, if any, does Hampton have something like an ownership claim in post-Army Fort Monroe? The assumption by our leaders -- in a state whose politics is driven by developers' money -- has been that Hampton has an enormous ownership claim, and not just a unique stake that all agree must be respected. In part, this assumption derives from geography and boundaries. And that's why it's important to note that only after 1942, and only after a third of a millennium outside of Hampton, did this national treasure come to fall within Hampton's boundaries. Thanks. Sorry I couldn't make it shorter. If anyone answers, I suggest that she or he replace the subject line. Steven T. Corneliussen Citizens for a [[self-sustaining]] Fort Monroe National Park (www.CFMNP.org) ______________________________________ To subscribe, change options, or unsubscribe please see the instructions at http://listlva.lib.va.us/archives/va-hist.html