Letter to the Editor

Dear Editor:

My wife and I live in Bellevue most of the time, and in Walla Walla as often as we can get over there. And we always try to get over to Waitsburg when we are "East," since we have grown fond of the town.

Last summer, we subscribed to the Waitsburg Times, and I always look forward to reading about what is going on in your town.

As a public school teacher, I truly have enjoyed keeping up with the efforts and many successes of the student-athletes over the past six months, so the "Of Mind And Body" editorial on the Opinion page of the February 24 issue was particularly nice to read. However, whomever wrote that piece left out one very important part of the community that makes Waitsburg so special: The Times itself.

I know quite a bit about small towns. I spent the first 18 years of my life in a town of 300 people in southern Iowa, and worked in at least four other small towns later in my life, none of which had a population over 1,500.

Sports can be the lifeblood of those small communitieshellip; activities that bring together all the citizens with one goal in mind, since many of the citizens of those towns probably either have a child participating in a particular sport, or they themselves were somewhat athletically involved during their own school career.

People might disagree about allowing ATV's on city streets, or the need for a horse track, but they will almost always agree that highlighting the successes of young people in their town is a good thing for the community.

And while the abovementioned article recognized most of the pieces of the puzzle that have been instrumental in the success of the various teams this past year, the value of a publication like the Times, a paper that not only avidly follows the efforts of these kids but reports their contests in such a way that the reader actually is sorry to have missed the game, can't be ignored.

Running a small-town newspaper is a hard business. Every employee has to wear many hats and put in long hours to keep the paper on track so that it always arrives in my mailbox, all the way over here (the "West"), on time, every week.

I hope that all the citizens of Waitsburg, as well as the surrounding region, realize what a treasure a good local newspaper truly is. I have only been in the Times office once, but I am really looking forward to being able to stop in there this summer, when I can visit their new coffee shop, and maybe actually sit in that space and read an issue "hot off the press."

For those of you who are fortunate enough to live in or near Waitsburg, I hope you will take the time to tell the folks who publish the Times how much you appreciate their ongoing support of your communities.

Ted Cox Bellevue, WA (and some-