To whom shall I address this? To Rufus Ward? Robert Snow? Bunky Williams? Or to Birney Imes himself, there in the middle and running the show, because I feel I’ve known you all for ages and that you’ve just dropped by.
See, I’ve recently been given a gift … my very own Sunday Edition of The Commercial Dispatch home delivered here in New York, and for the last two hours, I’ve sat (with The New York Times scattered about my feet), back on Main Street in Columbus. Memorial Day, indeed.
I’ve not been totally out of touch. For years, a dear friend in Caledonia sent me reams, reams, I tell you, of clippings she knew would grab me …. your columns, Rufus, and yours, Birney, and all those pertaining to my Lee High years with you, Bunky. When that attentive friend died, there came the loss of a friend, yes, but also the loss of a sense of time and place, kept alive by her letters that bulged with clippings from The Dispatch.
As for dear Waverley. How to explain a love affair with a deserted mansion on a riverbank where no cars could go? That was way back, of course, way before the guardianship of the incredible Snows. I can’t remember how I first got there, but a ferry was involved as was a curiosity that wouldn’t leave me alone. Later, a guy from the base who may have thought me suffering from the heat, patiently followed the vague directions I could recall until we found it. We dared go up the scraggly, boxwood-bordered walk with jay birds squawking overhead.
The door was unlocked, we pushed in, and stood at the foot of the stairs, stunned, in wonderment! In a room on the left, we stared at our reflection in the tall mirrors, and disturbed a spider web in the folds of faded velvet drapes. (By this point, the guy from the base was having his own sense of “being in another world.”)
But it wasn’t ghosts I felt. Rather, a heightened, tightened sense of life itself. Of … POSSIBILITY? Call it what you will, the daring Snows must have felt it too, and I salute them for grabbing hold, holding on, and wrestling it into reality. I enclose a check for a gallon of paint to be applied, with my love, where deemed most needed.
Warm regards to you all,
Marion Whitley
New York City
The Dispatch Editorial Board is made up of publisher Peter Imes, columnist Slim Smith, managing editor Zack Plair and senior newsroom staff.
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