Roger Estlack

What an exciting time to live in Clarendon!

Opportunities seem to keep cropping up at a consistent pace, and then last week the announcement came that a benefactor wants our city to have some type of water recreation facility. (See full story here.)

Such an enormously generous thing does not happen every day. One half of a million dollars is the offer to our fair city… if we can match it.

Even successfully matched, the community will still have work to do to make the dream of generations come true. Can we possibly have a swimming pool or, even more fantastic, a water park? The answer is simply “yes” if Clarendon will pull together.

In meetings, visioning workshops, and conversations for the last 20 years at least, people have always listed a pool – and more recently a splash pad – as something that would be an asset to Clarendon, something that would enhance the quality of life for families and visitors here. Of course, money has always been a stumbling block. How would you ever pay for such a facility; and if you got it built, how would you pay to operate it?

But now comes someone who believes in Clarendon… someone who we’re told isn’t from Clarendon and yet has an interest in Clarendon. That’s a pretty big interest at $500,000!

As city leaders have been quick to point out, nothing is finalized at this point. No checks have been written, no contracts have been signed, and nothing is absolute. A soon to be formed steering committee will take charge of many questions that still have to be answered. Where will it be? What will it be? How much will it cost? Will be people support it? And most importantly, will people give to it?

We need contributions of all amounts… from 25 cents to $250,000. There is room for everyone to give something, and every penny will add up.

Consider the benefits of such a facility. Number one, increased quality of life. The age old “there’s nothing for kids to do here” will finally be addressed. Kids not only from Clarendon and Donley County will have something to do, but kids from surrounding towns can also have something to do.

And think of the business that will come with those visitors. Wellington, in less than 60 days this season, drew 14,000 visitors with 70 percent of them from out of town! Just imagine an extra 14,000 people coming down Kearney Street during the summer months to get to a water park of some kind. What a boost that could be for local merchants and restaurants, and in turn a boost for our city’s sales tax revenues!

And better yet, research being done by the city into other communities that have built water parks is showing that such projects can actually be self-sustaining. In other words, done right, a water facility can bring in enough revenue in gate fees, concessions, and rentals to meet its expenses.

Surely, no other project at this time can hold such a broad appeal as a water park or swimming pool. We have the potential to do something special as a town, working arm in arm with each other to make Clarendon a better place to live, work, and play.

Our benefactor has given us a great opportunity… a great challenge… to pull together as friends and neighbors and businesses and organizations for the sake of our community.

As Clarendon’s oldest business, The Enterprise accepts the challenge and offers to do its part to help get the ball rolling. This newspaper will commit $2,000 to this project in the next 12 months and asks our fellow businesses to meet or exceed our contribution.

This is something our families want. It is something our community desires. And it is something our economy needs.

Let us roll up our sleeves, set ourselves to the task at hand, and tell our benefactor, “Challenge accepted.”

Editor’s Note: If you want to make a commitment to this project, contact City Administrator David Dockery at 806-874-3438

Clarendon has been celebrating freedom for a long time. Since that first summer in 1878 when those Christian colonists first observed Independence Day, our community came to be known for its Fourth of July festivities.

A lot has changed in the last 137 years. Singing and the reading of the Declaration of Independence have given way to parades, turtle races, and rodeos. But the spirit remains the same as our community rallies together to trumpet the greatness of America and the promise of Liberty and Opportunity that our Founding Fathers risked their lives to secure.

America, too, has seen a lot of changes. We’ve seen freedom expanded in many ways as the definitions of personal liberties have been broadened, and we’ve seen freedom limited in other ways as federal taxation and regulation constrict the free marketplace and the economy.

As a country we have much to be proud of about tolerance and the rights of the individual. And yet we also have much to learn as we all still figure out how to live together in what has been called a great melting pot of different people with many different beliefs.

Last week, the United States Supreme Court again upheld the Affordable Care Act, more commonly known as Obamacare. Republicans acted with surprise and outrage and continued to issue calls to repeal that law. Many people, your editor included, think the ACA is an abomination and a gross intrusion into our private lives. But after it survived its main Supreme Court challenge, that law has no more chance of being repealed than does Social Security or Medicare. It is here to stay.

Then on Friday, the High Court expanded the rights of same-sex couples to marry in all 50 states, saying those individuals deserve equal protection under the law. This caused the expected backlash from many people, but most puzzling came from Republicans in Texas and elsewhere who basically feel like religious freedom is under assault or at least threatened by this ruling.

It is an age old problem that America must still wrestle with. Freedom must be for everyone… or there is freedom for no one.

People are entitled to their beliefs and their opinions on same-sex marriage, for example. But the highest court in the land has determined that these marriages are legal. Your church doesn’t have to condone it; and you don’t have to attend a gay wedding; but if you’re a public official, you do have to provide them the same service you would be legally obligated to provide anyone else. Politicians and demagogues who encourage public servants not to provide government services based on their religious beliefs, are dangerous at best. For if you can refuse to give a same-sex couple a marriage license, what is to keep other people of strong faith or beliefs from refusing to prepare alcohol permits, serve mixed-race couples, or serve people of other faiths?

Freedom also means that sometimes you have to stomach things you don’t like. The Confederate battle flag in recent days has become a lightning rod again in conversations about race. Some people, like your editor, see the flag as a symbol of Southern heritage and the standard of a lost cause and a people who fought for their homeland. Others see the flag through the single view of racism, noting the Confederacy’s support for slavery and the use of the flag by hate groups.

Freedom means you can put crosses on your property up and down the highway, but freedom also means the travelers who are creeped out by what appears to be an overly zealous town can take their business elsewhere.

Freedom means you can put a Ten Commandments monument on the Courthouse Square and call it a historical marker, but it also means someone else could erect a monument to Jews and Muslims who have also called the same county home.

Freedom is hard. Freedom means you can do what you want, believe what you want, and say what you want. But so can I, and so can the other guy, and so can the Democrat and the Republican and the Communist and the Baptist and the Atheist. And most of all, for it to work, you have to be able to stand up for the rights of those you disagree with.

The biggest problem America – and indeed Texas – faces right now is that our two-party system wants freedom in different ways. The left largely wants personal freedoms with a strongly regulated economy, and the right largely wants a more deregulated economy with low taxation and gives lip service to personal freedom… as long as you’re an evangelical Christian who isn’t gay or wants an abortion.

We need to get back on track. We need to recognize that freedom comes in many forms and it benefits many people… not just ourselves or those who believe, worship, or think the way we do.

Jefferson said it best: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” America works best when we let those words be our guide.