The following letter was sent to Lewes City Council, with a copy submitted to the Cape Gazette for publication.
We agree completely with the content of a letter from Barry and Barbara Wise (Cape Gazette, Dec. 13, 2019) which expressed their outrage that the proposed Fourth Street name change to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard was moving forward without the involvement of residents on the street - those who would suffer the significant disruption identified in their letter.
More recently, a petition opposing the name change, signed by 26 mostly Fourth Street residents, was presented to city officials and the Cape Gazette informal web poll (Dec. 31, 2019, 809 participants) showed nine percent for “Full name change,” 13 percent for “Honorific name change” and 78 percent “Leave it alone.”
We live on Fourth Street and are opposed to the change for several reasons - we will consider just two.
They are: first, the disruption noted in the Wise letter; and second, resulting confusion that would result from the similar names of Kings Highway and King Boulevard, which would lead to serious consequences in emergency situations.
We are not opposed to renaming the Friendship Baptist Church, the Lewes Canalfront Park, or City Hall for Dr. King. Our favorite Lewes park is named after former Mayor George H. P. Smith and that is quite appropriate - he was a citizen of Lewes and served this community well.
Honoring Dr. King by “an additional street sign under the W. Fourth Street plate,” would only confuse the public and diminish the city’s connection with its historic past.
For these reasons we also oppose this particular form of honorific designation.
David L. Greer
Dorothy P. Greet
Lewes
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