Letter from the President

Pary Tell, President

Hi everyone,

I’d like to thank everyone who attended our annual meeting. It was exciting to see so many people who are interested in historic preservation and want to save our Wildwood treasures. We had a nice presentation put together by our Secretary, Gail Cohen, which outlined what historic preservation is and isn’t, followed by a good discussion on what people can do to help preserve the history of the island. 

In trying to explain to people who oppose historic preservation, thinking it means trying to go back to past times, I often find myself trying to describe the value in terms of dollars: saving an existing building is cheaper than building a new one, saving an existing building is greener, reusing materials instead of adding them to a landfill is good, historic preservation adds to economic growth, etc. But all of these reasons often don’t resonate with people who can’t grasp the emotional connection. 

With the holidays upon us, though, I’ve finally found a way, I hope, to help people understand why we want to preserve the architectural, historical, and cultural legacy of the Wildwoods. I was going through things that I use over the holidays that I rarely use at other times of the year. There’s the candy dish that my great grandfather gave to my mom and dad for their wedding. That cut glass bowl that belonged to my grandmother that I use for the turkey stuffing. Even a few things that were my great grandmother’s. There were also a good number of things that I threw or gave away because they were too damaged or just not anything that I would ever use. 

But the things that I saved are my family treasurers, linking me and my own children to our heritage. It’s the same for old buildings. Some are too damaged to save, some have no value to us in this time, but there are a good many that have special meaning, that link us to the past. 

Does this mean that I want to live like my grandmother or great grandmother did? Not at all. I don’t want to go backwards, especially to a time when the lives of many women were prescribed by society, leaving them little freedom to choose their own path. But that doesn’t mean that I want to wipe out all traces of my ancestors and especially of their stories that are a part of me today. 

Likewise, we don’t want to wipe out all traces of the Wildwoods that existed before now. We need to save the treasures that link us to all the great times of the past. Ladies strolling the boardwalk in their Victorian dresses and parasols, gentlemen in pinstripe suits and straw hats, downtown stores where the owners knew all the kids in town and you behaved so they wouldn’t tell your parents what you were up to, nights of rock ‘n’ roll celebrities playing in the clubs, and always the beach with all its variations in proper attire. 

We need to preserve those things that link us to that past and pass them along to our children so the memories made here won’t fade into nothing. There’s nothing wrong with new development, but there’s no reason that it can’t pay tribute to what came before, in the style of architecture and in the contributions it makes to the culture of the city. Showing respect for the past while moving toward the future is the best way to preserve the Wildwoods that we all love.

I hope you all enjoyed the holidays and are ready to start a new year with hope for the future of the Wildwoods.

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