Dear Santa,
Every year we sit down to compose a letter telling you what our community would love to have for the coming year. If it’s not too late, we’d like to have you place this letter on file so you can make deliveries at your leisure during the coming year after you have filled the orders for all the kiddies.
Every year you come through with some wonderful gifts. Sometimes we are left disappointed too. This year we found the all-new Crittenton Hospital stuffed in our stocking and a mile of Tienken Road paved for the very first time.
One of our big disappointments last year was our loss of Dura Corporation. Of course it wasn’t your fault. We thanked you in the letter last year for the apparent delivery of Dura but then a few folks got together and filed a lawsuit and our community lost a good tax-producing industry and good jobs.
Every year we express hope that you could roll up 40 to 50 miles of pavement in your sack, but it seems that about one mile a year is all that we can find. Santa, you should drive on these Avon Township roads someday instead of flying overhead all the time. With over 100 miles of unpaved roads remaining, it looks like we will have to live as long as Santa to see the job done. And that could be a long, long time.
For the past three years we have asked for a traffic light for the Rochester and Tienken Roads. We’re not asking for it just to make life easier to make a turn. That’s a dangerous place, Santa, and we are asking it for the sake of saving lives.
While you’re trying to solve traffic problems, and considering the paving the of roads, we are having a doosey on Walton Boulevard, especially from the Rochester city limits to Livernois, location of our new hospital. A nice, little piece of five-lane highway is all we now ask for.
With the County Equalization Board boosting all our township and city assessments up to the 50 percent level, would you please keep them in a happy mood during 1968 so they will now leave us alone?
Also, Santa, we folks are becoming pretty unhappy with the amount of vandalism hitting our community with windows being smashed, cars stolen and burned. (Which reminds us… you better not leave your sleigh unattended Christmas Eve. You might return and find it in ashes.) If you could perhaps bring a bit of love and kindness to the people responsible for these actions, we sure would appreciate it.
AND SANTA, DON’T forget to bring some happiness and understanding to the leaders of our community. It appears to be a critical year for deciding the future of our community and we will need all the patience, wisdom and spirit of brotherhood we can muster.
But somehow, Santa, all of our problems here in Rochester seem like peanuts compared with the life and death obstacles our men face daily in Vietnam. None of our requests are anything equal to the sacrifices of even one life.
If we were to be granted just one gift, Santa— it would be PEACE ON EARTH!
we are thanking you again for another industry that intends to build a plant here in 1968. We sure hope you are able to deliver this year without interruption.
