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URBANNA — Occasionally One Woman’s Opinion irritated some readers. Some to the point they threw all manners out the door and unleashed insults my way.
After each assault I wrote about the importance of open discussion of issues in a democracy and the rule of civil discourse along with throwing in a measure for developing respect and tolerance for one’s fellow man.
Yet a writer that goes public with opinion has to expect flak. One day the late kindly John Coe called me to complain. He had recently written a letter to the editor expressing his opinion directed at a column I had earlier written with which he ardently disagreed.
“It took me 10 hours to write that rebuttal!” he complained. “I missed an entire day of work! Then you hit me again the very next week with another opinion I didn’t like! I don’t have the time to keep this up!”
What could I have said? “It’s even more irritating that you obviously have an easy time spinning off your opinions while I have to struggle with every word!” he added.
He and others had noticed my opinions had turned conservative. The 9-11 attacks had recently occurred and triggered a huge jibe in the wind as to what I thought about political issues. It was time to batten down the hatches. I was ready for a strong military buildup, tighter control of our borders and a closer eye as to whom we were admitting into our country.
One month soon after and for three consecutive weeks three ladies each took a turn viciously attacking my column. The common theme was I was a bad writer and they wanted me fired.
Since they attacked not my opinions but my professional ability as a writer I decided to respond. I wrote a column titled “Throwing Stones in Middlesex County” lamenting that certain people thought they had the right to approve every item that appeared in the Sentinel and anything they did not like should be eradicated.
I added in a free society readers should be able to decide for themselves what they wanted to read and have some choice. I suggested it was a good idea for readers to develop tolerance for reading opinions they disagreed with and not try to shut down opposing opinion. I never heard another word from the threesome.
One man unhappy with my views on women entering the Virginia Military Institute (VMI) wrote a letter stating that he wanted to be buried so his head was facing Urbanna so he could keep an eternal eye peeled on One Woman’s Opinion. That was a gentle and clever response.
Another wrote that he did not like my opinion that week and that I should get out of town by sundown. That response was neither gentle or clever.
I had calls too. One man told me I was the “devil’s advocate on earth” and another, one of my favorites, Virgil Gill, said I should quit saying I was from “OHIYA” because OHIYA was (part of the northwest territory owned by Virginia at one time so therefore I was a Virginian!
The funniest letter to the editor came from my husband. A column I wrote on a trip to Yellowstone Park mentioned he had left our hotel one night in pitch dark in order to do laundry at the hotel’s laundromat. As he was lugging the laundry basket through the thicket, he suddenly fell over something big in the dark. It let out a roar. Chip fixed his flashlight on an angry bull buffalo sleeping on the ground. The lawyer picked up his spilled load of dirty clothes and made fast tracks to the laundromat.
I told the story in the Sentinel suggesting that perhaps Virginian lawyers weren’t comfortable handling 2,000 pounds of bull?
The lawyer, miffed, wrote a letter to the Sentinel the next week and assured readers that in spite of One Woman’s Opinion, a Virginia lawyer could certainly handle any amount of bull! (A reader told me when he read his letter he laughed so hard he fell out of his chair.)
The comments I received during those first years writing opinion were so amusing I compiled them into a comedy titled: “One Woman’s Opinion,” which today is a classic handbook of what a woman had to endure first writing opinion in Virginia in the 1980s. (I recommend women writers should still develop a sense of humor because they will need it.)
At the turn of the century I began writing stories of my adventures on the road — travels throughout the West, Maine, Canada, Europe, South America, Russia, the Caribbean and Japan.
I wrote about everything I saw, heard, did and thought. Two of my recent travel books, “Tripping” and “On the Toad Again” contain such stories told with lots of laughter.
The best part about writing about travels in distant countries was that no one over there would ever read my commentary. Which cut down on complaints.
© 2024
