B3C project coordinator: Four months remaining to recount Beaufort's history

When the initial steering committee came together to form the Beaufort Three-Century Project and contemplated what B3C should be and why, the meetings often digressed into people telling wonderful stories about their lives in Beaufort, of how things have changed -- some for the better, some for the worse, some with the jury still out.

About half way through one of these gatherings -- when the stories started to flow like a late-August thunderstorm downpour off a steeply pitched tin roof, and there was cordial but noted impatience for one to finish so the next person could begin -- a wise person took his turn, not to tell a story, but to say, "We need to answer the 'So what?' question."

Everyone paused and took a deep breath. Each person knew why this project spoke to him or her, but if three years were to be spent engaging people in learning about the history and documenting the stories of Beaufort, then so what?

There had to be a meaningful way to make this about preparation for the tricentennial while also having value for the long term. We danced around the "vision" word like it was radioactive, because it had been overused and abused. Nautical analogies came to mind, and it was decided that we would "chart the future" based on the past, but vision was what we were talking about, plain and simple.

Click here to read the rest of this article at beaufortgazette.com.