WEST LEBANON — The end of a decade prompts introspection about hardships faced, friendships that bloomed, new places that were discovered, and jobs that fizzled out. But it also serves as a mark for contemplation about how much has changed, and how quickly, and about what lies ahead.
Ten years ago at this time, dozens of people marched 126 miles between Brattleboro and Montpelier, passing through the Upper Valley in protest of the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant, hoping that it might close. Today, it is being decommissioned, and many of those activists have put their energy into combating climate change, another threat to our shared environment.
On the infrastructure front, work was just starting in West Lebanon on the long-awaited overhaul of the Route 12A and Interstate 89 interchange, which had been a source of chronic traffic jams. Construction was well underway on the Kilton Public Library, a modern amenity for old West Lebanon. With gridlock now a rarity and the library a popular hangout, both projects have to be deemed a success.
Across the city, school officials in January 2010 settled on the former “Moulton property” that is now home to the much-needed Lebanon Middle School.
A few miles north at Dartmouth College, blue-collar workers for the school were joined by some professors in protest of job cuts and budget-tightening. In the wake of the “great recession,” Dartmouth under the brief tenure of then-President Jim Yong Kim was trying to identify $100 million in budget cuts over the next two years.
Kim is long gone, and today, of course, there is a massive building boom in Hanover, involving both new college buildings and gaudy mansions for the 1%.
In Norwich, students at Marion Cross School gave a warm sendoff in January 2010 to hometown favorite Hannah Kearney, who was headed to the Olympics in Vancouver where she won a gold medal in the women’s moguls.
And at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, several medical teams mustered and responded to Haiti for badly needed humanitarian work after a 7.0 magnitude earthquake hit the island on Jan. 12, 2010.
There’s more work ahead, of course, but some good things got done over the past decade.
John P. Gregg can be reached at jgregg@vnews.com.