If You Ask Me / By Martha Knight

We remember where we were when JFK was shot. Well, those of us who are 55 or  older probably do. What we remember the most clearly about those cataclysmic days varies from one person to another.

What was it for you? I remember Cronkite in shirtsleeves, his glasses off, his voice breaking as he struggled for that professional composure so steady he was called “Walter Concrete.” His shock and grief were palpable, and seemed to demonstrate that this news was very bad indeed.

In the days that followed his was among the voices we heard as all the networks devoted non-stop coverage to that one general topic, the assassination of our President, with the other related topics.

There was the body lying in state in the Rotunda, and there were the widow and the children, the farewells, the casket being carried down the steps, the riderless horse, the caisson, the muffled drums. And the salute by John-john (he was saluting the flag, as his father had taught him)—probably the most poignant image for millions of us.

Throughout that long, sorrowful procession, three classical funeral dirges were played, in rotation, or as we say now, a loop. There was “Asa’s Death,” from Grieg’s “Peer Gynt Suite”; there was Chopin’s “Funeral March,” equally familiar; and there was “Marcia Funebre” from the A-flat Major Beethoven Sonata, Opus 26, adapted for band. The third was the one Cronkite did not recognize or announce correctly. That detail stuck in my mind. Now when I play that movement, I always hear the band playing it to accompany that sorrowing march toward Arlington.

It is clear now that there has not been closure. At least not to the point that we who remember “then” are convinced we know all we would like to know about the event. So much has never quite made sense.

Three assassinations  have left us more security conscious than before. President Kennedy late in 1963, then five years later, Martin Luther King, followed by Senator Robert Kennedy just weeks later.

It had been a long time since Louisiana Senator Huey Long, “The Kingfish,” had been assassinated in the state capitol—since 1935, in fact. And there are still unknowns about that.

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Rumor has it that the long awaited response to Liberty Township’s application for a PennWorks grant is negative. As I write, there has been no official notice to that effect.

It would have been a boon to the township, and to Port Allegany too, for it was not only a “matching grant” but a triple-matching grant. That is, instead of matching the local funds dollar for dollar, the Department of Economic and Community Development would have matched local funds $3 for $1. Grants like that are very scarce indeed.

Last time I applied for funding like that, it was in Allegany County, N.Y., and it was for money to open a sheltered workshop for post-school handicapped persons. First-year costs would be $40,000, of which the county would put up $10,000, to call forth $30,000 in state funds. (The local funds were supplied by the Allegany County Chapter of the Association for Retarded Citizens.) TREE Workshop was the forerunner of Piecework Industries and other programs of Allegany Arc, which now has an annual budget of many millions.

Here, recently, a Keystone grant was earnestly desired to help fund the library building project. It would have been a “straight match.”

The borough has utilized grant funds in its sewer line replacement efforts—nice to have, but not triple matches.

Both the township and the borough would have benefitted from this PennWorks grant, if it had been forthcoming. The borough had collaborated in the application, and would have received some funding if the application had been successful. The borough’s funding would have gone toward its next sewer replacement project.

No grant money, no project. Or so some people seem to think, based on the sighs of relief I seem to be hearing. But I think there may be sighs of longing before so very long., and  murmurs: “If only we had received that nice grant that would have paid for three-quarters of this project!”

It is true that Liberty Township would have borrowed the local share of the cost of the project, and plans were predicated on the success of the grant application. If the grant does not come through, the township is not committed to carry out the project.

But it is not true that the project, or one like it, and probably others with similar purpose, will not be undertaken at all. It is only a matter of time before the Department of Environmental Protection clamps down. Sanitation will continue to be a need, and, increasingly, a requirement. Safe water will be a continuing necessity, and one that cannot be satisfied entirely on the basis of existing wells and springs.

Some existing sewer customers in Liberty Township were alarmed by plans to extend lines to an additional portion of the township. Local amortization costs would be spread throughout the whole, enlarged service area, with all users paying the same rate and that rate probably rising.

Once the project’s local cost had been paid off, and debt service no longer was a component of sewer costs, rates would go down. The fixed operational costs would be spread among more users, and might be lower than before the project had been undertaken.

Failure to win approval of the PennWorks grant this time around also means a needed boost for industrial development will not be forthcoming in the near term. Lacking municipal sanitation and water service at the Portage Industrial Properties sites, would-be tenants may have to look elsewhere for locations for their enterprises. Those enterprises represent jobs, and eventual tax revenues.

No grant this time around means the entrepreneurs and municipalities are in try-try-again mode. The need is not going away.

Peace.