Editorial: Why Preserve Our History?

We have been asked: why does it matter to correct the history about the preservation of the West Concord Depot (as we did yesterday). It's nice, but does it really matter?

Certainly, many Concordians have been among the nation-wide leaders when it comes to preserving our history. It's simply mind-boggling to think of the visionaries who came before us who knew that both the "great" and the every-day things would be of real interest and value in the future. 

For example, how did someone like William Munroe know that by founding the Special Collections of the Concord Free Public Library -- dedicated to both the obviously important documents AND the ephemera of daily Concord life -- Concord would maintain itself as a center of research because of the richness of its major-university-level primary source material? How did Munroe have the vision to do this?  It simply stuns us! 

Connected in the River of History
But there is something far deeper than research-fodder in our efforts to preserve, know and understand our past.  While pondering this, we happened to run into two wonderful quotes this week that we feel illuminate the wholly human aspects of full and vivid history-keeping.

First, from Kurt Vonnegut's novel Breakfast of Champions, a book populated by humans filled with anguish, disconnection, desperation and despair, the one character who stands out as fully different is mentioned only briefly. But the richness and connectedness of his world is apparent.

At the wheel of the ambulance was Eddie Key, a young black man who was a direct descendant of Francis Scott Key, the white American patriot who wrote the National Anthem. Eddie knew he was descended from Key. He could name more than six hundred of his ancestors, and had at least an anecdote about each. They were Africans, Indians and white men...

Eddie Knew knew so much about his ancestry because the black part of his family had done what so many African families still do in Africa, which was to have one member of each generation whose duty it was to memorize the history of the family so far... As he sat in the front of the disaster vehicle, looking out through the windshield, he had the feeling that he himself was a vehicle, and that his eyes were windshields through which his progenitors could look, if they wished to...

Eddie Key's familiarity with a teeming past made life much more interesting to him than it was to [the main characters in the book], or to almost any white person in Midland City that day... Eddie Key was afloat in a river of people who were flowing from here to there in time. [The others] were just pebbles at rest.

And Eddie Key, because he knew so much by heart, was able to have deep nourishing feelings [about others]...

A Gift to Ourselves and the Community
In the second quote, from a Native American children's book called The Raven and the Sun:  Echoing Our Ancestors, comes the human importance of history: "Each time a story is shared, whether spoken, written, dreamed or remembered - it is a gift - from those who came before to those who carry on in their footsteps.  Listen to the story of your elders and those in your family and community."

Having a full and rich knowledge of our history nourishes us, as it nourishes our community, too. It connects us to events, places and to one another.  A community unaware of its history -- or harboring narrow or false notions about it -- is just a pebble at rest, not afloat in the river of  life. Even if the facts are not ones we prefer, we can celebrate that we have been brave enough to openly know and speak them.

We know that history is generally written by the conquerors, not the conquered. However, the Concord Magazine Blog has for nearly 12 years been a voice of the Concord stories-not-otherwise-heard, and tales of those not in power. The fuller story of the West Concord Depot was not recently publicly repeated until it was told here yesterday, not because it was unknown to all -- there are some we know who have known the facts -- but because it was for some reason politically or personally inconvenient to acknowledge.

Why would that be? Well, who can truly say? We won't speculate or try to characterize the motivations of those who try to edit Concord history.  We can only say that it's important that we recognize all that transpired in the cause of West Concord historic preservation.  We are tremendously proud of and congratulate all who have thus served.

Photos: Fairhaven Bay along the Sudbury River. ©2009 Rich Stevenson of Local Color Images