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Keeping Lawrence, Lawrence
Lawrence 1955 & 2021
How do we keep Lawrence special? How do we preserve our past and honor our heritage while keeping our community vibrant, contemporary, and moving forward?
Honoring history maintains our connection to our past and the sacrifices we made individually and shared in our journey to get to where we are today. Hopefully, we can learn from the past and grow and evolve as we forge forward creating new history.
Preservation of our historic homes and buildings protects and enhances real estate value and the real estate market. They become points of interest for visitors to our communities. They become meeting places for the residents. They get turned into restaurants, Hotels, libraries, etc.
The continuation of cultural traditions is essential to preserving a sense of who we are. Lawrence is such a wonderfully diverse mixture of race, ethnicity and color capable of creating wonderful new traditions for the future.
The celebration of our cultural heritage locally in Douglas County also connects us with similar cultural traditions throughout our country and even the world, uniting us to the rest of the world.
Preservation and conservation of the environment, our environment, makes our community sustainable for ourselves and our children. By making our community sustainable, we do not sacrifice economic viability but use it to build our community.
Preservation is about preserving and maintaining, but balanced with evolving. To quote Bob Dylan — ‘If you’re not busy being born, you’re busy dying.’ To continue to be relevant and keep all of the things uniquely Lawrence, we must continue to grow, learn and develop, but not forget our past, preserve it and use it as the seeds for our future.
Lawrence has proudly been a progressive community since its inception. We are more than proud to remind our neighbors that Kansans voted to be a free state and reject slavery. We know the history of Bleeding Kansas as if we lived it ourselves. What has been created here is worthy of preservation. With our united vision, we have cultivated a diverse and inclusive community. As we navigate the changes and challenges before us, we must continue to choose to preserve what we have and help Lawrence evolve into the future we want it to be.
We also need to protect and preserve our local businesses. Shop Local, Shop Lawrence!
- Ann Frame Hertzog, Editor-in-Chief/Publisher
- Steven Hertzog, Chief Photographer/Publisher
