THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, October 5, 1994 TAG: 9410050005
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A14 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Opinion
SOURCE: By JOHN KANELIS
LENGTH: Medium: 78 lines
A sense of the need to protect history's meaning has penetrated the hearts and minds of the people who run the United States' foremost entertainment company.
Is this a great country, or what?
The Walt Disney Co. wanted to build a history-based theme park six miles from the site of two bloody Civil War battles. This week, Disney Chairman Michael D. Eisner, who first championed Disney's America, led the effort to end it.
The Disney board decided it would cost too much, both in dollars and in good will. So the company backed out, citing the outrage of historians, preservationists and environmentalists who had objected to the plan.
They were right to complain.
Disney was right to back down.
Disney's America would have sprawled across 3,000 acres at rural Haymarket, Va., near the Manassas National Battlefield Park.
The proposed $625 million theme park, 50 miles from Washington, D.C., would have resulted in the building of more than 2,000 houses, 1,340 hotel rooms and nearly 2 million square feet of commercial space.
Many of the folks who live in the region said a theme park would have destroyed the area's special tranquillity. They said Manassas would become a commercial playground like Orlando, Fla., and Anaheim, Calif. - where the company built two other major theme parks and transformed rural farmlands into billboard-choked urban centers.
That's not for them, these residents of Northern Virginia said.
Certainly, not all Virginians opposed the theme park planned for Manassas. The state's congressional delegation wanted it. So did Virginia Gov. George Allen.
Some Virginians objected to the national outcry from historians and other observers outside the state. ``Butt out!'' they said. ``This isn't your concern.''
Oh, yes it is.
The significance of the events at the little stream called Bull Run, where Union forces were defeated in 1861 and 1862 belongs to all Americans. There, Union and Confederate soldiers fought the bloodiest single-day battle of the Civil War. It marks the place that their blood consecrated for the ages.
Virginians cannot claim exclusive stewardship of that place any more than the residents of Honolulu can stake such a claim to Pearl Harbor.
Did the entertainment moguls who run Disney have to build a theme park at Manassas, perhaps destroying the very special feelings one experiences while honoring the memories of those who died there?
No, it had its choice of less-unique sites with less special meaning to Americans. Almost immediately, Maryland, West Virginia and communities throughout Virginia clamored to be considered as the home for Disney's America.
Disney says it will look elsewhere in Virginia to build its theme park, but some industry analysts predict that the company will abandon the concept.
``We recognize that there are those who have been concerned about the possible impact of our park on historical sites in this unique area and we have always tried to be sensitive to the issue,'' said Peter Rummell, president of the Disney Design and Development Co.
The company's decision to pull out of the Manassas region is proof of that sensitivity.
Shelby Foote, the Civil War historian, said recently he feared that Disney would bring a kind of ``sentimentality'' to its portrayal of American history and that Manassas would become a sentimental place as well.
It is not that. The place where thousands of Americans died is a virtual holy ground and will remain so for as long as Americans have the will to fend off commercial encroachments. Historians and preservationists have scored a big - and praiseworthy - victory in that never-ending battle. MEMO: Mr. Kanelis is editorial page editor of the Beaumont (Texas)
Enterprise. by CNB