The campaign to prevent a tower being erected in Rensselaerville, Iowa has inspired lifelong area resident Kenneth Cooke to pen a letter to the local Altamont Enterprise pleading with his neighbors to think about progress. Titled “This tower for communications is called progress, the life it saves may be your own,” the 77-year-old talked about his father who “lived here for 87 years and told me that his generation made more progress than any other before or since. He told me that they went from having no running water in the house, no electricity, and using horses and buggies to having cars, telephones, computers, and to putting a man on the moon.” Cooke acknowledges that progress “comes with a price such has electric and telephone poles, roads across farm land… but all for good purpose.”
“Now a handful of people (and I do mean a handful) in our town object to making progress with a communications tower that most people in town won’t even be able to see. Our fire departments, sheriff’s department, and our ambulance services have to keep up with what is required today due to the changing times,” wrote Cooke. “That is why they need a reliable communication tower that will work for all of the hamlets of the town.”
Cooke wants the bickering to end and progress to continue. He’s appealed to the better part of human instincts with an impassioned plea for sanity. “Instead of lawsuits against the town you live in and the county that provides protection, the people should be thanking Sheriff Craig Apple and the county for trying to provide a service that will make everyone’s life safer and better. Whether you have lived here one year or 77 as I have, let’s not stop progress that will affect our safety now or for future generations.”
Reader Interactions