Letters to the Editor for Saturday, November 7, 2009

Writer: The poor are here year ’round
I am writing to you today because my heart is heavy.

I have been a Lynchburg resident for nine years and love this area to raise my children. My husband and I are foster and adoptive parents, and over the last nine years, I have realized the lack of support that our community receives.

A couple of weeks ago my mother and I visited the Daily Bread on Clay Street, and I was appalled by the lack of clothes that they had to give to people in need in our community; the facility itself serves more than 150 people that they feed for lunch on a daily basis.

The people that they are trying to help live here, in our own community.

I was also told that because of the budget they can only serve one hot meal to people a day, what do these men,women and children do for the rest of the day?

In a community where we spend millions of dollars trying to make it beautiful and pour money in to the arts, it’s disgusting that we can not even take the time to help our own people! The time to help is not just at the holidays, it’s all year. What happens when the holidays are over?

When is the last time you took an hour out of your week to go to the Daily Bread or the Salvation Army to lend a hand or an ear? I know times are hard for everyone, and sometimes you have more to offer than you even realize the people who are in need may just need a kind smile or someone to listen, to make them feel that they are worth something.

Please open your hearts and your eyes and know that every man, woman and child deserve to know they are special!
MICHELE MILLER
Lynchburg

LU and elections
Certainly Bill Blackwell has a civic right, within the law, to act as he so clearly presented in The Forum on Nov. 5 when he stated “I do not intend to sit quietly by while my hometown becomes some kind of appendage of the far right fundamentalist machine on Candlers Mountain.”

I would like to remind Mr. Blackwell that the university on that mountain also has a right, within the law, to act for its own good and purposes.

The university is not a charity. It is a business, just like other business, corporations, enterprises and other types of institutions and is equally interested in the political and civil doings of the city, county and greater community.

This business, Liberty University, has employees. It has a product, which is a quality degree in Christian education. The university has those who buy that product who are normally recognized as students. They spend their money, time and energy while living among us to achieve that cherished product supplied to them by the employees and its employers.

The university, as other business enterprises, seeks to expand, to gain profits, to enhance its product, to better service its patrons and to ensure its longevity.

In this regard, the university is very much interested in supporting those who make policy and laws who would sincerely consider the universities declared needs and goals … officials who will represent, within the law, that body of constituents … officials that recognize the obvious symbiotic relationship between Liberty University, the city, county and greater Lynchburg community as a whole.

The electoral truth regarding one’s personal belief, one’s institutional goals and one’s political aspirations and affiliations, is it not common to all areas of capitalistic political life?

Why, then, should some view Liberty University differently than any other business entity that strives to legally advance its purposes and goals? Why should the university be demeaned? If so … well, there is the box?
ROBERT BONHEIM
Lynchburg