Letter to the Editor: Remnants of a community ...

To the Editor:

This week a good friend informed me that the Munchkin Program at the Community Center has been terminated, and Laquata Meade summarily dismissed. You do not have to be a working parent of one of the toddlers to understand how important the Munchkin Program has been, and hopefully will continue to be, to our little community of Boca Grande. The parents of these toddlers work at our restaurants, clean our houses, landscape our yards, and serve us at our local shops.

Without a program like the Munchkins most of these parents will have no choice but to either stay at home with their children, or enroll them off island in day care causing them unnecessary hardship to work here. I have coffee most days with a distinguished group of men known at Previously Important People, or PIPs.These men have accomplished much during their lives, and when the Munchkins walk by our table I can’t help but believe that the good start the Munchkin Program provides will someday produce our future PIPs.

This community came together and fought for the Island School, where the Munchkins are expected to go to school after graduating. The Munchkin Program and the Island School provide our community with much more than just a convenience for working parents.

The Munchkin Program and the Island School help make us a real community, not just the remnants of a community.

Friend of Boca Grande,

Thomas H. Murrian, Jr.