CFMNP What's New

NEW (8/18) THE PUBLIC IS INVITED: GOVERNOR KAINE TO SIGN REUSE PLAN WEDNESDAY, AUG. 20, AT FORT MONROE. Please see the Fort Monroe Authority's press release. (Also, please note: There will be no August Fort Monroe Authority meeting.)

NEW (8/10) CITIZENS FOR A FORT MONROE NATIONAL PARK ASKS GOVERNOR KAINE TO DISCUSS FORT MONROE'S FUTURE. Please see the letter to the governor from CFMNP President H. O. Malone. And please consider going to the "contact us" page at Governor Kaine's Web site and asking him to make sure to schedule the requested discussion. His staff reliably reads those messages. If a number of Fort Monroe's truest friends ask, you'll be doing great good for our cause. Governor Kaine has often promised us that he'd talk to us about Fort Monroe. Now is the time for him to do it. Thanks.

NEW (7/6) THE NORFOLK PBS STATION'S FORT MONROE DOCUMENTARY "Kingdom by the Sea: Fortress Monroe" is easily accessed and viewed online. It's a 27-minute masterpiece that's crucial to see if you're at all interested in Fort Monroe. WHRO-TV, Channel 15, recently received a "Best Television Documentary" award for the film, which is a production of WHRO's Center for Regional Citizenship.

NEW (7/6) NEW YORK TIMES ARTICLE COVERS THE PROSPECTS FOR A FORT MONROE NATIONAL PARK, highlighting the Fort Monroe freedom story of self-emancipating "Contrabands." A key excerpt: "It was at Fort Monroe in May 1861 that the stage would be set for the demise of slavery, almost two years before Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation." The article quotes CITIZENS FOR A FORT MONROE NATIONAL PARK Vice President Gerri Hollins, who founded the Contraband Historical Society, and CFMNP President H. O. Malone.

NEW (7/2) CITIZENS FOR A FORT MONROE NATIONAL PARK is asking all friends of Fort Monroe to send comments by e-mail to the Army by July 7. For a quick-and-easy explanation of what's needed, please see the July 2 entry at our Updates archive -- or you might instead want to see our slightly longer explanation.

NEW (6/11) PLEASE VOTE FOR THE FORT MONROE NATIONAL PARK OPTION IN ABOUT.COM'S INFORMAL ONLINE POLL -- and maybe also contribute to Kimberly Lenz's related online discussion there.

NEW (6/8) NORFOLK VIRGINIAN-PILOT CALLS FOR CREATING FORT MONROE NATIONAL PARK in an editorial that concludes: "But none of those stories will be told as effectively or reach as broad an audience unless the National Park Service is involved in the next stage of Fort Monroe's history, unless preservation groups commit resources to establishing a public trust for its protection, and unless local, state and federal leaders unite in the obvious -- creating Fort Monroe National Park."

NEW (6/7) DAILY PRESS OP-ED: CFMNP's Steve Corneliussen proposes that "now is the time to speak up about Fort Monroe's future." Please see June 7 at our Articles & op-eds page.

NEW (6/4) ON NATIONAL PARK QUESTION, PARK SERVICE PUNTS. On June 3, the National Park Service finally issued its long-awaited Reconnaissance Survey, a very light study meant to determine whether Congress should commission a full Special Resource Study of the prospects for park service involvement at Fort Monroe. Their answer boils down to something like this:
Well, maybe.
They punted. The park service did affirm that Fort Monroe is superbly qualified for national park status, but they recommended deferring the Special Resource Study. They noted that a sensible arrangement at Fort Monroe would probably "require a non-traditional form of management that would rely on a range of partnerships to be successful" -- quite analogous to what we have been saying for two years, focusing on the precedent at San Francisco's Presidio. We think there's an explanation for the park service's hesitancy, and that it lies not with understandably cautious federal bureaucrats, but with Virginia's leaders. Virginia's leaders have scanted the national park option even though Virginia law calls for investigating it -- and even though four nationally respected preservation organizations do too. More will be coming about all of this, but for now, you can hear easily accessed audio of a five-minute discussion about the National Park Service study -- a conversation between CFMNP's Steve Corneliussen and Cathy Lewis on the talk show "HearSay" from the Norfolk PBS affiliate 89.5 FM WHRV. (To start the five minutes, move the timeline cursor to time 7:50.)

NEW (6/3) CITIZENS FOR A FORT MONROE NATIONAL PARK COMMENTS ON THE FORT MONROE AUTHORITY'S DRAFT REUSE PLAN. The plan itself appears at FMFADA.com, where online comments will be accepted until June 15. We will be saying more on this subject, probably including in an e-mail message to members of our list, which you can easily join. (We don't use the list often, and we share it with no one.) We will be urging you to comment to the Fort Monroe Authority.

NEW (6/1) KEY OFFICIAL REJECTS DEVELOPMENT-FOR-DEVELOPMENT'S-SAKE. Mike Gooding's recent Channel 13 report, still available online as of June 1, includes Fort Monroe Authority executive director Bill Armbruster saying, "We don't want to do development any more than we feel would be appropriate to make [Fort Monroe] economically sustainable." Amen! Will this fine new principle be incorporated explicitly into the authority's reuse plan?

NEW (5/30) CITIZENS' FORT MONROE CIVIC ENGAGEMENT HIGHLIGHTED ON "HEARSAY." Cathy Lewis not only hosts the WHRV FM 89.5 noontime civic-affairs talk show "HearSay," she heads a regional civic leadership institute. So it's all the more notable that on May 28, she and Daily Press reporter Kimball Payne energetically acknowledged the work that private citizens across the region are doing to ensure a fitting and proper future for Fort Monroe. "Citizens and folks who where interested in the future of that beautiful place have really made their mark on this plan," she said concerning the Fort Monroe Authority's reuse plan. She continued: "I think when the story is told on Fort Monroe, the piece of this that will be very intriguing to study from a civic-engagement perspective is the work of those organizations that have been so active in having a hand in this process, and if you look at issues that have happened across the region in recent memory, I can't think of one where you had more folks involved, more folks who were genuinely committed to doing the hard work of civic engagement to make their thoughts and their feelings known than in this case ... ." To start the 7-minute discussion, available online, move the audio button on the timeline at the bottom of the audio screen to time 6:44, the point in the hour-long broadcast where the discussion began.

NEW (5/29) THE NUMBERS ARE COMING UP ROSES FOR A FORT MONROE NATIONAL PARK. Will the decision-makers continue moving in the right direction? Their consultants are giving them the economic numbers to justify it. Please see the two news articles dated May 29 at Articles & op-eds. We'll soon be posting our comments about the Fort Monroe Authority's new "reuse plan" -- and we'll be submitting them, and asking you to submit your comments to the authority too.

NEW (5/12) CONGRESSIONAL CANDIDATE GLENN NYE, writing in a political blog: "I understand that a full study of the feasibility of making Fort Monroe a national park has not yet been commissioned. I think a special resource study is a good idea." He's running in the second district, which contains Fort Monroe. At the moment, the National Park Service is completing a small "Reconnaissance Survey" simply to decide whether or not to recommend the Special Resource Study -- a measure that Citizens for a Fort Monroe National Park has been calling for since mid-2006.

NEW (4/30) CONGRESSMAN ROB WITTMAN: "I'd like to see us make sure that Fort Monroe is preserved in a way that the public can enjoy the entire property." (In reply to Steve Corneliussen on Cathy Lewis's "HearSay" on WHRV 89.5; go to time 49:48 on the "audio on demand" for April 30 at the "HearSay" site.) This may be the first congressional-level affirmation that all of Fort Monroe is a National Historic Landmark belonging to everybody.

NEW (3/1) TOP 10 REASONS TO MAKE FORT MONROE A SELF-SUSTAINING NATIONAL PARK. Please see Scott Butler's Mar. 1 op-ed at Articles & op-eds.

NEW (1/25) ARMY RECEIVES HUNDREDS OF PUBLIC COMMENTS SAYING NO PRIVATIZATION, MAKE FORT MONROE A NATIONAL PARK, AND PROTECT THE NATIONAL HISTORIC LANDMARK STATUS OF THE ENTIRE POST. Please see Matt Sturdevant's fine Daily Press article and Channel 13's Dan Rubin's TV report (Please scroll through the video player on the top right for the Fort Monroe report)