When I was a kid, I remember how local restaurants, stores and even private clubs would sponsor little league baseball teams. That usually meant that they’d buy the kids’ uniforms. The team members would gladly wear a cool “real” uniform with the store’s name on their back. After games, one malt shop had the whole team over for ice cream and popsicles. These local stores believed in community responsibility. They figured the whole community helped them be successful in business, why not return the favor in some small way? Why not?
Today we have seas of new community members arriving. They fill the giant newly built home developments, growing by leaps and bounds from East to West Limestone. Lots of these people are arriving to fill the new jobs created by industrious campaigns to bring corporations here. You can’t drive anywhere in southern Limestone County without seeing huge corporate buildings with endless parking areas surrounding them. What sense of community do these corporations have?
Unlike highly regarded and well-praised local attempts by private efforts to make Athens’ downtown a place of good restaurants and entertainment, we lack so much for any real sense of community. Why not approach some of these corporations for support? Our county’s second district has no public parks. Why not make a requirement for any new housing development to include a public park in their overall plan? Make that a requirement for approval of their home construction. A public park, where future group activities or music concerts or simple quiet time can be spent sitting on a bench in nature could thus be found all around our county. We could have picnics, listen to the sounds of nature and enjoy one another’s company. We have plenty of lakes and ponds, but who has built overlooking benches so someone can watch the water, the geese or even see a fish jump? Or who has thought to build a path around the lakes, or to the shores of our great Tennessee River, open to the public? In the early days of Wheeler Wildlife Reservation, millions of trees were planted. Why can’t we have something similar? The answer to these and so many other issues is, of course, money. Where to find it?
Lots of Limestone citizens have observed that the Wellness Center pool, which once helped our elderly enjoy physical movement and friendship, has been closed. Their efforts to get it reopened so local swim teams don’t have to go to Morgan County to train, or doctor’s advised health practices must go to Madison, have all died. No government agency acts to support reopening it, giving years-long excuses. I can hear that can getting kicked down the street.
Here’s an idea. Why not have our government reach out to the giant corporations which get so much from us? Not only their business booms because of our industrious workers, but they’ve benefited from giant road projects that serve only them. They have sewage, lighting and everything else they wanted to move here. Their tax abatements, their prime locations, their preferments go on and on. Why not ask them to build a Wellness Center? The pickleball courts? Why not have them complete parks throughout the county? They could build huge music venues such as Orion in Madison. Consider the fantastic response to the air show at Pryor Field. People want to enjoy the fruits of their labors. Why should they have to leave this county to find it? Look at how corporate involvement could make ours a county for people to enjoy, not just to dwell in. There’s a task which any city or county official could get behind. If we are a community, we should act like one.