Facing the Future

by David Brinkley

David Brinkley, the NBC News Commentator, visited his hometown in November, 1975, to address the Historic Wilmington Foundation.  He spoke about Wilmington's historic resources and what should be done to protect them.  Here is an edited version of his remarks.

When I left Wilmington about 30 years ago, I had a great affection for it, even though about all anybody here was doing was sitting around waiting for the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad pay day, but then the Coast Line moved away and the big pay day ended.

I've often been since that was the best thing that ever happened to our town, that it woke Wilmington up from a long afternoon nap.  A very long nap - about 100 years.  While other cities were building, developing and growing, we sat around and waited for the Coast Line to pay off.

Hot Dogs and Taxes

But it could turn out to have been a benefit.  If you visit some of the cities that were growing when we were not, you might wonder if they're really better off.  Particularly when you see their traffic jams, tangles of neon signs and hot dog stands, and with local taxes rising rapidly because the new population needs schools, water, streets, police, fire, and so on.

Only now, in the last two or three years, have we seen a substantial public reaction against rampant urban growth, because people in American cities and towns have found it is a mixed blessing.  It does bring some money in and the local people get to look at the money for a few days before Internal Revenue takes it away from them.  But it also tends to bring more problems than it solves.  I've talked to officials of a number of cities that grew enormously in the last twenty-odd years, and almost without exception they are sorry it happened, even if they won't say so in public.

Look at Atlanta.  It has grown like a weed and it now looks like one.  It has every urban problem we know of, and they are the kind that won't go away.  They just grow and get worse.

Wilmington was, and remains, a smallish town with great future potential - with the time and opportunity to profit by other cities mistakes.  For a lot of other cities that did not fall asleep for 100 years (including Washington, where I now live) it's too late.  They are ruined and cannot be saved.  Certainly not by any means now known to us.  The good news is that here we still have time to avoid all of that.  Or most of it.

A Sense of Place

Most of us have been to a lot of places and all of us are aware, in towns other than our own, of a vague and indefinable quality we see and feel.  It's hard to describe, an ambiance or a presence, the feeling that the place looks and feels like something, as opposed to nothing.  In western towns, where you see people in boots and cowboy hats, the town looks and feels like what it is - a cow town, or a place whose quality and texture are derived from what it is and what it does, and where it is.  And it is pleasant to be there, and when you leave you have the feeling you have been somewhere.

I doubt any of us has ever had the feeling in a town that is primarily a collection of gas stations, Holiday Inns, McDonalds, a few ordinary and uninteresting residential areas, and a lot of highway signs telling you which way out of town.

Our town has a great deal more than that, and could have still more.  It's an old town.  By American standards, very old.  Its setting on the river, the ocean and the bays and sounds, is exceptional.

Atmosphere and Beauty

When I travel around and people ask where I came from and I tell them Wilmington, North Carolina, they often say, "Oh, yes, that's up the coast, north of Charleston."  To which I answer, "No.  Charleston is down the coast, south of Wilmington."  But nevertheless, Charleston is a good deal more famous than we are because it has done a great deal to preserve its atmosphere and beauty.  The  Batters in Charleston is quite beautiful, and the uglier our cities become, the more attractive an area like that becomes, and the more attractive to visitors.

I'm on the Board of Trustees at Colonial Williamsburg, which is really only a big restoration project, and our annual stream of visitors is in the millions, rising all the time.  We often have more crowds than we can handle.

It may be a startling fact, but true, that Wilmington has a greater number of interesting houses than Williamsburg does.  We don't have as much history, but what we find people most like to do in Williamsburg is walk around the streets and look at the houses, and where possible, go into them.  Wilmington doesn't have a Governor's Palace nor a House of Burgesses, and Patrick Henry did not make his speeches here, but we do nevertheless have a great deal of interesting architecture, more than any but a few American cities.

Profiting from the Past

Charleston has profited enormously - and not just in money - by preserving theirs.  Until recently, we have done very little.  Now it is started.  There is a tremendous amount to be done, and I hope it will be done, because we have an asset that most towns in America would be delighted to have.  We have many old houses, some restored, some waiting to be.  We have the basic materials that other cities don't.  You can't preserve a historic house if it is not there.

The simple fact is that the big cities of America are becoming more and more uncomfortable, unpleasant, even dangerous, and ugly.  Just plain ugly.  Beauty is an increasingly scarce commodity.  As it becomes scarcer, it becomes more and more sought after, more and more in demand, and at a higher and higher price.  A town like Wilmington that possesses this kind of beauty - actual and potential - is in a remarkably good position to take advantage of it, develop it and enjoy it.  And profit from it, though I don't want to put all the stress on the economic benefits, important as they are.

Even beyond the money, there is the sheer pleasure of living and working and raising children and dogs in a town that is pretty, a town that feels as if it means something, that has some atmosphere, rather than one more collection of pizza parlors and neon lights.

Here in Wilmington we have a choice, and the time to exercise it.  We slept through the uglification of America and did not suffer the mutilation that has occurred in so many other cities.  Or not as much of it.

Planning for the Future

In most controversies about public policies, usually about how to spend money, it is usually a question of doing this or that, one policy or another policy.  In Wilmington, no such choice is necessary.  We can do both.  We can preserve and protect our beautiful historic buildings and we can build new ones elsewhere in town - and without any conflict between the two.

You do not have to give up one to have the other.  In fact, they complement each other.  If people come to town to visit, they will also want a new hotel or motel to stay in, new stores to shop in.  So there's something in it for everybody.  And I can tell you from my own experiences, it pays off in every way.  I hope that here in Wilmington we continue to go ahead with it.  We'll be crazy if we don't.