Goodbye Glen Garden; school priorities; Senate report on ‘torture’

Goodbye, Glen Garden

It was my privilege Tuesday to play a final round of golf at the venerable Glen Garden Country Club in Fort Worth.

The next day, the 102-year-old course closed its doors for good. The club is being sold to make room for a whiskey distillery.

For one last time, I wanted to walk the same fairways that legends Ben Hogan and Byron Nelson trod as youngsters. One last time I wanted to envision the same shots that the great Sandra Palmer did as she was learning the game.

For one last time, I wanted to embrace as much of the history of the fabled course as I possibly could before it disappeared from the city’s landscape.

Glen Garden is as much a part of the fabric of Fort Worth history as the Stockyards and Texas Christian University. Yet it is being sacrificed to make room for a distillery.

I have no problem with a whiskey distillery. But I do have a problem with the abject lack of concern and appreciation for history.

Shame on the city council for approving the destruction of such a storied landmark.

Shame on the whiskey distillery that could have located anywhere but still chose to destroy history.

Shame on us for not crying louder to keep it from happening.

— Norm Petersen, Granbury

School priorities

Principals and school leadership teams are in the best position to determine what their school needs, but the Fort Worth district doesn’t ask or even listen (”What makes sense,” Nov. 29).

What taxpayers should be asking is who makes these descisions and how.

The schools have no input and what they offer is disregarded. Then somebody in the district makes a decision that appears to appease.

Our school has 1,200 students, 35 percent of them in portable buildings with no restrooms; a shortage of restrooms in the main building; and a shortage of lockers, with some so outdated there are no parts for repairs.

In dangerous weather, the ground floor isn’t big enough for all students, so students in the portables are brought inside to shelter on the second floor.

A common-sense reallocation was mentioned for artificial-turf practice fields.

I would like to know who somebody is, because it appears they did a really horrible job.

— Cathy C. Seifert, Fort Worth

Senate report on “torture”

I was slightly amazed and quite dismayed at the number of letters in “The Daily STEW” that supported or at least accepted the CIA’s use of torture.

They seem to confirm one writer’s thought that the terrorists may already have won by causing us to forsake our higher values and better angels and stoop to the terrorists’ own barbaric methods.

Thankfully, there are leaders as disparate as Dianne Feinstein and John McCain and Barack Obama who continue to condemn the use of torture with the claim that it is not “who we are.”

I sincerely hope it is not who we are becoming.

— Ed Cunningham, Euless

Thank you President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, the CIA and all Americans who did whatever necessary to keep our nation free from additional terrorist attacks following the awful 9/11 attack that killed more than 3,000 Americans.

The report, issued by a Democratic-led Senate committee, was obviously another ploy to move all of the negative attention away from the Obama administration for their many failures.

For any U.S. representative to suggest that we owe these terrorists an apology for using whatever measures necessary to gain critical information that kept us free of attacks should be considered treason.

Most of the terrorists on which these tactics were used are still alive, some even released from prison. Their victims are dead.

I can only assume that these same Democrats feel that we owe Japan an apology for Truman’s decision to use the atomic bomb thus ending the war with Japan and saving thousands of American lives.

God bless America and all the people that continue to make every effort to keep her free.

— Mike Robinius, Granbury

This story was originally published December 11, 2014 at 6:00 PM with the headline "Goodbye Glen Garden; school priorities; Senate report on ‘torture’."