Playing by and in the Potomac River with our young friends from Richmond was a special treat when we were children. These friends came on weekends and in summer spent weekdays with their Moms while Daddy went off to Richmond to work. A few of these childhood friends remain dear friends of today.

     Little did I realize then that our little seaport village would grow so much that by my seventies we would be having a Community Meeting to discuss the future of our village. Nor could I imagine that a team of four gentlemen from Richmond, representing the State of Virginia, would be leaders of that discussion.

     We were grateful to Jan Orhmundt, a year-round resident of our community, and her fine committee who planned the meeting and did an excellent job as hosts and hostesses to make everyone feel welcome at our small village church, Coles Point United Methodist. The meeting was well attended and our main question posed by the leaders was: “How do you want to see Coles Point ten years from now?”

     One person’s comment from the back basically summed up the feeling of the group. “Just the way it is.” He had come here because of the special place it is. I have friends living at the other end of the County who spend their weekends here because they say their lives change for the better when they turn into Route 612.
At the meeting, I discovered what I did as a child. We have many wonderful “river folks” who come here to share the life we enjoy. For the most part, they bring wonderful friendship and are assets to our community.

     For the group as a whole, I would sum up our feelings in this way. We want to keep Coles Point country with open spaces, woodlands, clean river, creeks, and ponds with the sights, sounds, and smells of nature around us. We’d like to see our community and river folks take pride in their homes so we would have lovely surroundings rather than a few junkyards here and there. We would like to see a nice Civic Center where our children could play and our youth and adults have recreational activities. 

     We’d like to see Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) take better care of our side roads and include more of them under state maintenance as well as improve care of ditches. It would be good to see lower speed limits enforced and a security system for the safety of us all. Animal control is a necessity so the freedom of some folks will not be forsaken for a careless few.

     I feel that most of the group was not interested in businesses moving in for surely that will take away our country life and before we know it we’ll be having sidewalks and street lights and it will be a place to retreat from instead of a place to retreat to for peaceful, quiet, country living. It would be good if our County Zoning Committee would help us keep rural and country so we can keep on playing by the river whether we are seven or seventy. How we need a place to relax in a world now filled with fear and confusion. 

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