Cemetery too peaceful for Wal-Mart
If the Veterans Administration wouldn’t do it, should the city of Pullman?
The city’s approval of putting a Wal-Mart Supercenter on Bishop Boulevard would not meet the standards being followed for locating new veterans cemeteries, according to a Jan. 26 Spokesman-Review article. It stated that “current cemeteries are not built in the middle of a metropolitan area … because it’s not a reverent, respectful place.”
Nor will the proposed back-to-back location with a super center. The Pullman cemetery is the resting space for many veterans of previous wars as well as their nonmilitary counterparts. They deserve to continue to not have their solitude disturbed with Wal-Mart delivery trucks, shoppers, and bright lights. The addition of a thin screen of a make-believe forest will not suffice to remedy the proposed trespass.
Allowing Wal-Mart to intrude on the cemetery will be gross, shameful and monstrous.
David Flaherty, PullmanSo it would appear from recent letters that PARD is trying to dig up the cemetery issue again. Unfortunately, PARDner Flaherty's letter is so full of holes you could drive one of those Wal-Mart trucks through it.
The Pullman City Cemetery, while it contains some graves of veterans, hardly reaches the level of a national veterans cemetery, which inters veterans from over a large regional area. Even if it were, Pullman can scarcely be considered a "metropolitan" area.
Flaherty's quotes come verbatim from this Spokesman-Review article from January 28. Flaherty cherry picks, of course, and conveniently leaves out that the "reverent, respectful" statement was with regards to locating the cemetery closer to Spokane. The sites being considered include Medical Lake (Pullman would probably qualify then as well), even one OFF I-90 Talk about trucks!!
And what's wrong with having our CITY cemetery close to town? It makes it easier for families to visit. And cemeteries are for the living anyway. No one at the cemetery is having their "solitude disturbed." Whether you believe in an afterlife or not, the dead are beyond caring about "Wal-Mart delivery trucks, shoppers and bright lights."
And why apply a current standard to a cemetery that was started over a 100 years ago? At that time, the cemetery WAS out in the boonies. The town has just grown out to meet it.
The selective outrage over the Pullman City Cemetery rings hypocritical to the extreme. Where is the similar outrage over the Oddfellows Cemetery on Sunnyside Hill? The Pullman School Bus Garage comes within a few feet of the gravestones without even the benefit of a "thin screen" or "make-believe" forest.
There are MANY Wal-Mart supporters who have loved ones buried at the City Cemetery. For PARD to continue to make this an issue is beneath contempt and shows how desperate they have become.
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