THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, October 5, 1996 TAG: 9610050010
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A14 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: 40 lines
Hampton Roads owes its prosperity to the sea. Exports and imports have flowed across Hampton Roads' piers for four centuries. For even longer than that, watermen have brought finfish and shellfish to its shores.
In the Colonial era, Spanish and British warships sailed into Chesapeake Bay, between the capes that the English named Henry and Charles, into Hampton Roads. The French fleet's blockade of the mouth of Chesapeake Bay sealed the fate of Lord Cornwallis' army at Yorktown. Unable to escape by sea, Cornwallis was compelled to surrender his forces to George Washington, effectively ending British rule over the 13 colonies.
Hampton Roads has played host to the U.S. Navy and the U.S. Marine Corps more or less continuously since the United States of America emerged from the shambles of a shaky confederation. It has played host also to the U.S. Coast Guard, too. And it has benefited greatly - economically and otherwise - from the close association with sailors, Marines and Coast Guard personnel and the institutions to which they belong, and - we are bold to suggest - vice versa.
Starting Tuesday, Hampton Roads' seven cities and the Navy, the Marine Corps and the Coast Guard are staging the first Fleet Week celebration of the region's long-running, mutually rewarding military-civilian partnership.
It's going to be quite a party, with 12,000 Hampton Roads schoolchildren going to sea for a day in Navy ships, sports tournaments, shipboard tours, military and civilian concerts, a chili-cooking contest, a ship parade, warplane flyovers. SEAL and hovercraft demonstrations, a rodeo, a military-art exhibition and other events, one of which is a Gospelfest.
The events are so widely scattered that none of Hampton Roads' 1.5 million inhabitants need feel left out.
Among the inhabitants are 100,000 uniformed men and women. Tens of thousands of others are spouses and children of military personnel. And many thousands more are civilian employees of the sea services. May everyone - aboard or ashore, uniformed or not, on duty or at liberty - have a whale of a good time. We're entitled. by CNB