So long, Bill White. Your departure is welcome
Kudos to Patricia Murphy for her May 31 column about Bill White’s relocation to Florida. Atlantans can feel sympathy for his husband, who will no longer have ready access to local family, but White’s departure is welcome.
The late Don Sutton had a pithy baseball explanation for teams’ trading disgruntled players: “Addition by subtraction.” White’s efforts to make himself the center of political action and being unable to provide cogent answers to issues like Buckhead City’s access to schools and various city services proved his undoing.
Effective political leaders rise above self to deliver solutions with justifications of why their policies merit support. He couldn’t do it. His departure invokes historical advice from native Georgians like Lewis Grizzard (“Delta’s Ready When You Are”) and Ray Charles (“Hit the Road, Jack”), who never met Mr. White. Perhaps his best guidance would be from poet Robert Burns: “Oh, would some Power give us the gift/ To see ourselves as others see us!”
RICH LAPIN, DUNWOODY
Displaying flag shows respect for those who served
On Memorial Day, I drove around my neighborhood and local region to see how many flags were displayed. On my 40-minute ride, I saw only two American flags. One was mine, which I put up every day.
None were on county or state buildings or a lot of homes. Have politics so poisoned the mind that people might be afraid to show the American Flag even on Memorial Day? It says a lot about the appreciation we have for all the servicepeople who risked or gave their lives so that we can live in the greatest country in the world. The dead servicemembers would have never believed it.
I believe that the media has a lot of responsibility for the love or hatred of our country. I pray that the media use their awesome responsibility more wisely.
MILTON SHLAPAK, ATLANTA
