New Beaufort supermarket better than old theater

All this brouhaha over whether another grocery store in the northern section of Beaufort is preferable to an old movie theater!

Over the course of my lifetime spent in Beaufort there have been at least six movie theaters: the Breeze, Greenlawn Drive-in, Royal Drive-in, Lady’s Island Cinema, Plaza, and Highway 21 Drive-in. There must be pretty good reasons why we are down to only one “walk-in” theater in town.

I personally would very much like to have a more diverse and upscale grocery store, conveniently located where I don’t have to drive through downtown Beaufort at a snail’s pace, wait for a seemingly always-open bridge, and then endure the horrendous drive across Lady’s Island. Could this be why the Lady’s Island Cinema didn’t make it?

As for the people who claim there is nothing for kids to do around here, shame on you. Are you kidding? We have more to do here around Beaufort than just about anywhere in the country and anyone who thinks otherwise is probably spoiled rotten, just plain lazy, or from some big city up North.

In this age of technology, when even just-released movies are readily available online within weeks, and near-perfect surround sound systems are easily affordable, why would anyone want to pay exorbitant prices to sit in a smelly, dinghy theater for two hours? Oh, did I mention the pause button on the remote control?

How we know the Holocaust is real

We have always believed in the Holocaust. The newsreels of 1945 were enough. But there is much more.

In 1955 we visited Dachau during our honeymoon. Driving from Munich, we saw a small sign with an arrow and a single word, “Krematorium,” pointing the way up a side road. At the end we found the infamous “Koncentration Kamp,” with its empty barracks, its shower room with ceiling nozzles for poison gas, its cremation ovens (including smaller ones for children), “Blood Ditch” with its wooden grating to facilitate cleanup after those shot on the rim fell in and bled out.

In the 1970s we lived in Israel and had many friends who experienced the camps or who had relatives who did. One of our engineers there was married to a lovely girl who still bore her camp number tattooed on her wrist. He ordered a BMW as his company car, telling her that stood for “British Motor Works.” When she learned the truth, he was forced to re-order a Volvo.

An Israeli colleague, born in Berlin and a British Army vet, swore to never speak German again and he never did. He was a great negotiator dealing with German companies since he could not avoid overhearing their “private” side discussions.

Finally, two German lifetime friends from their student days in Boston have never denied the Holocaust to us. One spent his honeymoon in Israel with us. The other is a Harvard MBA, son of an SS medical officer who knew Hitler.

Beaufort County schools should use impact fees

Based on my reading of the front-page article in the Sunday, Aug. 19, paper titled “Beaufort County Schools revert to mobiles, but not what you’d expect,” the option of impact fees for school construction, as discussed in my letter to the editor on June 21 titled “Use these fees for new schools,” does not seem to be in consideration for the issues identified in the Sunday article.

This despite school board members expressing their desire for additional options for “permanency – a permanent building and safer places for people to be” in this article.

With a new superintendent, and the opportunity for change in the upcoming elections, I would hope that the best interest of all of Beaufort County students and taxpayers would be considered by our county representatives.