|
Renowned
Historians and Environmentalists speak out
|
DON HENLEY,
Recording Artist, Founder - Walden Woods Project & Thoreau Institute:
We hear a lot of talk these days about patriotism. We see the flag
everywhere we go. We hear a lot of talk about our freedoms and our democracy
and how precious these things are, and how we all need to stand together as a
country and fight for our freedom, and how we should be aware of and be
appreciative of these things. And I
agree with all that, I think this is the greatest country on earth. However, I find it rather sad and ironic
that at the same time that we are talking about these things we are allowing
some of our national treasures to be destroyed. We are allowing the places that were the very cradle of our
democracy to be ruined by commerce – for the sake of commerce - and for the
sake of convenience. And I’m speaking
specifically about Minute Man National Park and Walden Woods, two places that
figure most prominently in who we are as a nation and in our culture.
|
|
ED BEGLEY,
JR., Actor, Environmentalist: Because there are so few places like
Walden Woods and Walden Pond left, to increase the capacity of this airport,
Hanscom Field, it’s like firing up a foundry in the Sistine Chapel. This is a very special place, it’s
emblematic of a greater idea, an idea that needs to be preserved – what Henry
David Thoreau talked about: to live more simply.
|
|
|
HENLEY: This
is not just a local issue. People
mistake Walden Woods and Minute Man for local issues, simply because they are
located up here in New England. These
things belong to all people everywhere, in the United States and throughout
the world. And for that reason,
everybody ought to rally ‘round these places. You need to be able to take the children there and say, “see, this
is the wood Henry wrote about”, “see, this is where our forefathers fought for
our freedom”. You give the children
what is rightfully theirs, just as you give them Gettysburg; because it is
rightfully theirs.
|
|
|
RICHARD
MOE, President, National Trust for Historic Preservation: One
of the ways we can help young people especially to understand our history is
to bring them to sites like this, to actually show them what happened, to see
the battle that occurred here, to see what happened here and what it meant
for the beginning of our country.
These are classrooms; they’re not just great historic sites that
deserve to be protected for their own sake – they do deserve that, but
they’re great educational tools, particularly for children. But for all of us, we can renew our faith
in America and our understanding of American history by coming to these
places.
|
|
DOUGLAS
BRINKLEY, Professor of History, University of New Orleans:
Too often now our national parks and our historic sites are being
destroyed by a culture growing around them, and nothing could be worse. Imagine going to Sleepy Hollow, the
resting place or the cemetery of our greatest writers, and just hearing a
constant line of roaring engines going over your head. I love this country. I’m an American historian. I want my children and my grandchildren to
come and get to see where in 1775 people put their real necks on the line to
create the freedoms that we enjoy. I
want to go and study the literary renaissance with my family. I want to go and actually walk across the
North Bridge, which is such a seminal site from the American Revolutionary
War period. And what I don’t want to
do is just hear all this distraction, all this noise, and just destroy all
the tranquility.
|
|
|
CHRISTOPHER
REEVE, The late Actor, Director, Humanitarian:
We’re already
ruining so much of this country by our carelessness. This above all others, the place where we
began, must not be destroyed. Just
for symbolic reasons, emotional reasons – I mean if you don’t care about the
place where our country was created, then what else should you care about?
|
|
JAMES O. HORTON,
Professor of History, George Washington University: I think
it makes little sense to push our nation to the point where we forget and are
unable to visualize the values that brought us into existence as a
nation. You know, to go out to that
bridge in Concord, and to look out over the landscape, and to think about the
fact that two hundred years ago some farmer stood in that place and looked at
that landscape, and to think about the kinds of things he might have imagined
– obviously, he couldn’t possibly have foreseen the fact that we’d be talking
about the possibility of an airport over his landscape view. But to be able to do that is to put us in
touch with that world, with that world which was very different from our own,
and a world we need to be aware of, because at some points in our lives we
need to escape from this world, at least long enough to be able to reflect on
how our society got us here.
|
|
|
EDWARD O.
WILSON, Pulitzer Prize Winning Author, Naturalist: The
continued conversion of much of the world is inevitable. There will be more suburbs, there will be
more airfields, there will be less natural environment left and historically
important places left to pass on to future generations, all around the world
– that’s inevitable. But I feel we
should consider the argument that there is no place in America with the same
magnitude of luminance and importance as this area, around Walden Pond and in
the historical areas of Lexington and Concord. They should be given special consideration. And I think the balance should be tipped
for all the American people - for the future of the people in the country and
for the future of the people living here - tipped towards preservation.
|
|
BEGLEY: We
have so many places that are built upon, and there’s increased traffic and
there’s increased noise, and there are many special places that have been
changed, altered forever, that are very important to us. This shouldn’t be another one of them. The “shot heard ‘round the world” did
occur just a short distance from Hanscom Field. And Thoreau lived and wrote and walked here. I think this is a place that needs to be
preserved in perpetuity. And we can
do that by giving local control of this airport to the residents and the
leaders in this specific area. I think
it’s very important, certainly given the fact that there are alternatives,
that there are other ways to move people around in speed and comfort that do
not include Hanscom.
|
|
KEN BURNS,
Director, Producer, Historical Documentarian:
The American Revolution takes place before there are photographs, and
so we are relegated to a few, very few contemporary paintings, and many of
those are a little bit cartoonish so it’s hard to create a reality the way
you can with an old photograph. And
the only way we’ve found in the films we’ve done that have taken place during
the Revolutionary and immediately post-Revolutionary period, on Thomas
Jefferson, on the history of the Shakers, on the voyage of Lewis and Clark,
was to go back to the places where these events take place and to film them
at the same time and day and year that those events take place. But how could you do that with a jet
roaring overhead leaving a contrail?
How could you do that with the traffic going by outside? How could you do that? Even at Gettysburg today you have to
reframe to keep the golden arches of McDonald’s out of your frame. I do not want that to happen to
Lexington/Concord, it’s too precious; it’s too important a moment to let that
happen. And anybody who visits
Gettysburg is not begrudging people the right to have a hamburger at
McDonald’s, they just want them to have that McDonald’s move just slightly
out of view, so that those of us who are listening to the ghosts and echoes
of this inexpressibly wise past might have something to bring back.
|
|
DAVID McCULLOUGH, Pulitzer Prize Winning Author, Host of “The American
Experience”: Once the spell, the spirit, not to say
the actual, tangible buildings and land of these treasured places are
violated or destroyed, they’re never the same again. You can’t bring them back. And it’s so easy to say, well, they’ll
just have to accommodate – No! Let’s not accommodate; let’s keep it the
way it is. Let’s honor our
forebears. President Bush, in his
remarks at the national prayer service following September 11th,
said, “Let the commitment of our fathers be the calling of our time.” Let the commitment of the people at the
bridge in Concord in 1775, the commitment of people like Thoreau, Emerson,
Hawthorne, and the whole way of life in Concord, be the calling of our
time. Draw strength from that. History is an inexhaustible strength to
draw upon – who we are, what we are, where we’ve come from. And any tangible evidence of that, any
tangible setting that evokes the spirit of those distant times and those
great people, must be saved.
|
|
MOE: At
the National Trust we spend a lot of time and resources trying to protect a
lot of different kinds of historic sites from a lot of different kinds of
threats. They’re all different,
they’re all unique, but they all deserve our attention. And we are very focused on doing
everything that we can to preserve this part of our heritage. And thank goodness we have Save Our Heritage
and wonderful local partners that we can work with.
|
|
HENLEY: I
think Henry, and I’m on a first-name basis with him now, I think Henry would
have been very upset about this, and I think he would have something to say
about it. As a matter of fact, he did
have something to say about it, he warned us about this as far back as 1861. I would like to read for you a passage
from this book Wild Fruits that was recently published, that pertains
precisely to the problem we have here.
“Most men, it appears to me, do not care for Nature and would sell
their share in all her beauty for as long as they may live for a stated and
not very large sum. Thank God, they
cannot yet fly and lay waste to the sky as well as the earth. It is for the very reason that some do not
care for these things that we need to combine to protect all from the vandalism
of a few.” Can’t say it any better
than that.
|
|
|
PAUL
NEWMAN, The late Actor and Humanitarian: We go to natural places to replenish
our spirits. The places that we as
Americans have set aside for this purpose need to be kept serene and
undisturbed. This is all the more
true of places where nature and history come together, like Minute Man
National Historical Park and Walden Woods. The uncontrolled growth of an
airport next to the Old North Bridge where the American Revolution began,
next to Thoreau’s Walden Pond where the American environmental movement
began, is simply not acceptable. It
threatens the integrity of these national treasures and diminishes their
message. Now is the time to act. Let’s work together to preserve our
country’s natural and cultural legacy for the generations to come.
|
|
LET'S MAKE NATIONAL HISTORY . . . BY
SAVING IT!
|
