As a “come here” I have met many of the smartest people on the Shore and I listened to the lessons they were teaching. (They didn’t know they were teaching!) It might have been in the car while being shown real estate by Herb Lassiter, Jack Mason, Jona Davis or over a beer by a man who quit school in 7th grade.
There are several brilliant people who would have made great congressman or filled other positions but I guess they were never interested. Many people on the Shore are not ambitious, not hard working and laid back as were many back in Ocean County, NJ. When a person breaks that mold the sky is the limit.
Billy Lewis from Associated Farms is as smart as they come and Larry Rantz knows his business and how to work hard. Gene Turlington has the personality and skill to make everyone feel like a life-long friend. Herbert Hoover Lassiter gave me the wisdom to know something may seem too pricey because we are thinking in old dollars and that if you buy that real estate in 10 years you will marvel over how cheaply you got it!
Jack Mason before his career in real estate was in the news business and knew where all the skeletons were buried. He told me the total if the I Q’s of the Accomack BOS were to be added as compared to room temperature. He sold the property on 13 to Frank Perdue and Frank was trying to hide his identity with dark glasses and a trench coat. Jack told him he knew who he was and wouldn’t get the place for a cent less than the asking price.
The 7th grade drop-out served in the Navy during WW II and when discharged instead of buying a new car like most vets did invested in Ma Bell. Over the years, he’s 91 now, he worked hard, had his own business and continued to invest. His two brothers are carbons of him and they are all very well off. He has more smarts than Bernake and the rest of these Haaaavaaad types. My degree is business and I taught my 8th graders some about the stock market but never messed with it until the drop-out got me interested.
College is great but too much is expected of the graduates and the results in our society are a disaster. Years ago, if you could do the job, you were hired. If you had leadership skills and knew the job at the next higher lever you moved up. Now, we have people with education who, hands on are worthless.
My father only went to 9th grade, became a fire chief, an Army officer in WW I and a Naval officer in WW II and when he was moved to a higher job performed so well he was promote to full commander in 6 months after becoming a Lt Comdr.
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Mr. Zahn, I once worked at a lumber mill in Accomack County (back in the late seventies as an impressionable teenager). I met a gentleman named George Blake. He had been working at the mill all his life since he was a teenager. His first job was tending to the mules that would drag the fallen timber out of the woods. He was in his seventies when we met. He had been no further north than Salisbury and no further south than Nassawadox. He could neither read nor write. What he once told me stuck with me all of my life. He said, I wouldn’t give you a tumble cart full of book sense over a thimbleful of common sense. He gave me gold. And I never forgot that, or him.
I knew Herb Lassiter and his wife Joyce as well. Wonderful, beautiful people and I was fortunate to be a good friend of their youngest son, David. Herb Lassiter truly was a gem of a man and did quite well with his business. My heartfelt prayer for the Eastern Shore is for folks like Herb Lassiter and George Blake to take their seats on the Board of Supervisors, to instill the value of common sense and a love for all that the Shore has granted to its natives. My greatest fear is that it is quite the opposite. Business and money have corrupted and taken away any common sense and the Eastern Shore has reached that cross road from which it may never return. Your letter saddened me and also awoke me to this…People in power don’t have the market cornered on smarts. And smart people don’t have the market cornered on power. Thank you for your letter.
Ummmm Ummmmmmm Ummmmmmmmmmm………Lawd Sakes Chilluns dem fryd yaaad byrds sho nuf taste goooed!
Mr Chandler, you hit the nail on the head when it comes to common sense. It is AWOL from the Shore to Washington, DC.
I fear a lot of our schools and colleges are rewriting history and teaching ideology instead of truth. I also fear a lot of what appears in text books and what many teachers & professors teach is not even correct.
My father and I first came to Accomack in 1973 in order to escape what had become of NJ and settle in a place like what our home state once was. We pulled into Lassiter’s parking lot and found other cars there, also with WOBM bumper stickers, the local FM station in Bayville, Toms River. Many of us were of the same mind: had enough & were fleeing NJ. Herb & Joyce Lassiter were wonderful to us & we both bought farms.
Common sense says you can’t keep borrowing, laws mean nothing if they are not enforced, what we are doing about poverty & crime, drugs, is not working and there are ordinary citizens who have spent a lifetime with certain problems & who offer suggestions which are totally ignored.
Certain politicians have the answer to every problem which is more gun control and more & higher taxes. While our president & his ICE are setting violent criminals free wholesale we are expectedto be unarmed & defenseless. Seems rather ironic! Most families have at least one firearm & many people have concealed carry permits and these are not the weapons or the people who cause trouble. Good people who are rational don’t carry guns to a party, don’t have an argument & open a kitchen drawer & fetch a knife or go to where they store their Glock & end the dispute with a killing. Hillary wants us to believe that 90 murders per day are done with guns & that is another lie. It is also false that guns cause suicides; if not a gun perhaps a gas explosion or an auto crash and otheres who are hurt or killed.
Mr Chandler, you were learning as a teenager while working in a lumber mill. I was learning from all the jobs I held as a kid. Sad that so few kids today have part time jobs. A whole lot of valuable learning goes on outside the schoolhouse & there is such a thing as “the school of hard knocks”.
More than 10,000 deaths occur a year in the US from guns. Approximately a little over 30 a day.
• Only 1% of gun dealer account for almost 60% of crime guns recovered by police and later traced
• In one year, at least 30,000 guns were “lost” out of gun dealers inventories
• Guns with a short “time to crime” are disproportionately represented among crime guns. Guns manufactured and sold 3 years or less, prior to recopvery by police in crime make up 34 % of recovered and traced crime guns, but only 14% of the US gun stock.
• Guns sold as part of a multiple sale at a gun dealer were up to 64% more likely to be used in a crime than guns not part of such sales.
• “No background check” sales account for an estimated 40% of gun sales in the U.S.
Everytime a gun injures or kills in self-defense, one is used:
• 11 times for a completed or attempted suicide
• 7 times in a criminal assault or homicide
• 4 times in an unintentional shooting death or injury
• 1/2 of them are between the ages of 18 and 35
• 1/3 of them are under the age of 20
• Homicide is the second leading cause of death among 15-24 year-olds
• And the primary cause of death among African Americans of that age group
Mr. Zahn, I do not want to get into a pitched debate with you on gun control and the second amendment. I am all for the second amendment. I don’t agree with its literal interpretation (I believe the constitution is a living document as opposed to a static/locked in the eighteenth century document) But, I also think banning all guns is a huge mistake, especially in light of the crime and security issues this country now faces. But, it is a joke to think gun security is real. In the time a mugging take place and a person reacts to that mugging, a gun cannot be produced and used to prevent said mugging. That is just a sad, but true fact. I believe the penalties should be much harsher (use a gun in a crime, it’s automatically five years prison time-Virginia law) I think that ought to be ten years minimum. No parole. That way, an eighteen year old will be old enough to fully have developed his brain, thus his thinking processes and had long enough to think about why he is in there in the first place. Use a gun in a murder…automatic life sentence.
I think the answer is technology. For a safety, program the gun to use only its owner’s fingerprint to discharge. Use a national tracking and registration system and give the FBI and State Police the data base to monitor all new weapons sold. Lastly, restructure ammunition to render older guns obsolete and those that own older guns must register those guns to acquire newer ammunition that works in conjunction with older weapons. This takes a lot of fire power out of criminals’ hands and puts it squarely in the hands guns are meant to protect most. The law abiding citizens and police who keep us secure. This is my solution and from a realistic viewpoint, not impractical. I find it interesting that the same rules we apply to car ownership and usage, folks decry when applied to guns. Guns serve one purpose, and that is to kill. I agree with you, that our society is losing its civility and its noble purpose to be its brother’s keeper. But unless something is done to curb gun violence, these statistics I wrote earlier will only increase.
And yes, thank you for your kind response. I learned a lot from working young. I actually had a paper route before I worked at the lumber mill. I have been working since age twelve. I learned a lot from playing high school sports as well…teamwork, cooperation, sportsmanship and fair play. So, my life has been full. I try not to let politics get me too wired. Life is short and those jokers in Washington don’t mean anything to me. I pay my taxes (keeps the roads paved and the rivers clean, right?) and am proud to part of this great nation’s heritage. But, you’ve got to keep an eye on those buggers. Just wish we had more smart men and women in power…but that is a discussion for another day.
Good day to you sir. Thanks for your article and your response.