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Dec. 12, 2024 Editor, The News-Gazette: Sixty years ago, a small group, my father, Donald B. Clayton, a restoration architect, included, had the prescience to realize, as they saw the old buildings in our town being torn down to make way for post-World War II “modernization,” that Lexington’s legacy, so tangibly wrought in its old buildings, was its link to the town’s prosperity, beauty, and history in the annals of the United States of America. They, and others who followed, dedicated themselves to the preservation of our town that resulted in its national recognition as one of the top 10 most desirable places to live in the country.
When the tangible past is destroyed, it simply cannot be resurrected. However glorious the new Notre Dame in Paris is, its restoration cannot replace the patina of the ages that comes from the sweat and smoke and tears and laughter soaked up by its stones over hundreds of years.
The same will occur if VMI makes the disastrous decision to tear down those lovely old buildings on Letcher Avenue. Once those buildings are gone, they are so gone as to leave us breathless and uprooted. They are the very fabric of our historical town, shrines of the past that reassure our future. They are imbued with the memories, tears, and joys over a hundred years of Lexington history. We look to them as memory keepers as they speak volumes. They are our past, our present and our future. They are a key to our rich economy. Make a place look like hell and you’ll have hell to pay.
I join the many voices in our area urging VMI not to make this incalculable mistake. To do so would suggest the institution’s lack of recognition of the very foundation of this town; to dishonor the people who, since 1966, have dedicated themselves to preserving what we have here that makes us historically significant, economically prosperous, and otherwise just plain beautiful. To tear those buildings down, would be a travesty that will, I assure you, haunt the VMI forever. SARAH CLAYTON Rockbridge County
