Tittabawassee River Watch Editorial
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Kathy Henry, 09/14/07
The loss of community identity
Here we go again. One of
today's
headlines was the announcement that The Dow Chemical Company will now be the
major sponsor for The Bay City River Roar every summer. By doing so, the
event will now be called The Dow River Roar.
Huh?
It's fine and dandy if Dow wants to
contribute money to that event, but why must it now be named after the
company? For $35,000, it appears Bay City was willing to sell the name of
one of it's major summer events. It has been The Bay City River Roar for 20
years. That's pretty sad.
Flashback to about, what, 3 years
ago....
Yes, you all know what I'm talking
about. Even today when the subject is brought up, people from all walks of
life in Saginaw that I talk to roll their eyes in disgust at the mention of
The Saginaw Civic Center, now known as The Dow Event Center and referred to
as "The Dow".
Yes, Saginaw sold the name of our event
center to Dow Chemical as well for $250,000 a year. Just the name mind you,
not the building itself. But now, every event held in our event center has
Dow mentioned in the story or event. Not Saginaw. What ever happened to
Saginaw?
Pick up our local Saginaw newspaper on
any given day lately, and I swear some days there are more articles about
Midland than about Saginaw County. Midland has their own paper. If I want
to read about Midland, I can pick up one of their papers.
Has anyone also noticed that just about
every other event held in the Tri-cities lately has Dow as a sponsor as
well? Again, there is nothing at all wrong with the company's generosity in
wanting to contribute to local events, they have a lot of money to work
with.
But I want to know where Dow was for the
past 100 years they have been operating in Midland. Up until about 5 years
ago, most of us only knew Dow as that company up in the polluted city
of Midland that smells, and has all the buildings and events named after
them. So what happened 5 years ago to produce such a sudden interest in Bay
City and Saginaw after 100 years?
I think you know the answer.
I just hope that the struggling
communities of Bay City and Saginaw don't lose site of who we are. Stop
selling our names. As we all know, there is a price, a certain loyalty
expected from a company for such generosity. I for one, want no part of
becoming "Stepfordville" aka Midland.
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