Editor:

I read Mr. Gambino’s letter to the editor concerning the trees below the bluff on the bay. I couldn’t agree with him more. Sadly I have noted the many encroachments on our view of the bay along Mobile Avenue as well as Bayview.

I was born in Fairhope in 1938, was educated in the public schools, cheered for the Pirates and kept my feet in Mobile Bay as much as possible, not realizing at the time what a privileged and idyllic life we all had. I married and moved away, but I never got the sand out of my shoes, and like so many others, I heard Fairhope calling me back.

Perhaps we have all been too complacent, thinking as long as there is a bay, we’ll have our view. Alas, we are wrong. In an attempt to improve on nature and beautify the beautiful, we have overplanted trees and shrubs, erected metal artwork and allowed fences to be built as well as sea walls, which have destroyed our beaches. We are effectively killing that which we love most.

Not everyone can afford his own private view, but we should be able to see, at the very least, our bay unobstructed. In 1985, my husband and I bought a house on White Avenue from which I could see Mobile bay. Today that view is greatly diminished as I look through crepe myrtle trees and sago palms, all planted on public land.

Fairhope enjoys a very special, indeed, a unique heritage that we should cherish and preserve. It is incumbent upon all of us as residents of this wonderful little town to respect and uphold the legacy of its founders who had the foresight and egalitarian values to purchase as much land as they could along the bay for all of us to use. Both White Avenue and Nichols Street extend to the bay with that land reserved for public, not private use. Through the years, many such public accesses have been gradually “taken in” by adjacent property owners. It happens so gradually, a flowerbed here, a post or two there, that no one seems to notice and nothing is done to reclaim our land.

I love the Marietta Johnson bronze grouping in its natural setting in the park on the bluff. A teacher myself, I smile warmly as I pass her by. I am aware that there is a committee for public art, which has plans for more commissioned pieces. There are many sites in Fairhope that would be enhanced by such art, but please, please, I beg you, do not place them on the bluff or along the bay. The bay is not a backdrop for manmade attempts at creation — the bay IS the creation. The bay IS the art show.

I love Fairhope and I know change is inevitable, but we must preserve what we treasure. Please let us have our view back so we may all see our bay unobstructed, our polluted, beachless but oh so wonderful bay.