City Notes: Charles City: A place to build bridges

By Jim Erb, Charles City mayor

After 22 years of writing articles for this column, the time has come to move on to the next chapter. First of all I owe a lot of thank-you’s to a lot of people.

• Starting with the citizens of Charles City: As you might expect, I haven’t gone 22 years without experiencing some difficult moments. However, for the most part dealing with citizens in our town has been a positive, civil experience. It is part of our DNA in the Middle West to be nicer to work with than might otherwise be the case in other parts of the country.

• City staff: The city had just started utilizing the city administrator form of city government six months before I started my first term as mayor in January 1996. Since that time, I have worked with four city administrators, two city clerks, a number of special skill individuals, numerous department heads and their staff, and a large number of volunteer city committees and commissions.

Again, my experience has been uniformly positive. The city administrators and city clerks were all very different and very competent. I am happy to report the change to the city administrator form of city government is a success which won’t require any major changes in the foreseeable future.

• Elected officials: My experience in working with the City Council has been consistently productive. By adding two planning sessions in alternate weeks to the regularly scheduled two meetings a month, the council sessions have continued to be business-like and efficient.

We have had subjects that were not unanimously agreed upon but the debate has always been civil.

• Family and law firm: For me, needless to say, the commitment to City Hall has to a certain extent come at the expense to all others who are closely associated with me in my personal and business lives. Again, I have been the beneficiary of their support. Once again, one and all – thank you!

Having said thank you in concluding one chapter of my public life, I want to leave one general thought about where we are as citizens of our city, our state and our country and where we need to go in the future.

I think a debate is taking shape along the lines of the Bridge Builders vs. the Wall Builders. Before further comment, I would like to offer two poems for consideration.

The first was part of materials contained in a Charles City Family YMCA presentation, at the request of Julius Huxsol, in the early 1970s when the present Y was being reconstructed.

The Bridge Builder

An old man going a lone highway
Came in the evening cold and gray
To a chasm vast and deep and wide.
The old man crossed in the twilight dim,
The sullen stream had no fears for him,
But he stopped when safe on the other side.
And built a bridge to span the tide.

“Old man,” said a fellow pilgrim near,
“You are wasting your strength with building here;
Your journey will end with the ending day,
You never again will pass this way,
You’ve crossed the chasm deep and wide,
Why build you this bridge at evening tide?”

The builder lifted his old gray head,
“Good friend, in the path I have come,” he said,
“There followeth after me today
A youth whose feet must pass this way.
This chasm which has been as naught to me
To that fair-haired youth might a pitfall be,
He, too, must cross in the twilight dim,
Good friend, I am building the bridge for him.”

— Author: Will Allen Dromgoole

The second poem was a product of a joint community effort celebrating the Revival sculpture at Victory Park.

Building with the Bridge

Walking over, walking under . . .
Always looking up,
A permanent flowing through broken memories,
This river life. . .
a fragile balance
stepping. . . stepping. . . stepping. . .
Toward a resurrection required
To live. . .
This river life.

Bank to bank, forever reflecting
the not forgotten,
A bridge flows over,
A river flows under,
And we . . .
Walking over, walking under . . .
In this river life,
Always looking up.

Needless to say, I am the product of a generation born in the early 1940s that believed we could succeed in many different ways. We built bridges to move forward, to overcome difficulties, and to unite – not divide.

We helped tear down the Iron Curtain which was the Russian Wall of our time. If we need to restore some bridges, fine. If we need to replace some, fine. And, if we need to build some more, fine.

But for goodness sake don’t tear a bridge down just so we can hide behind a wall. We can do a lot better than that.