Despairing for the Future of Alamedans

Editor:

I was mortified to learn, reading yesterday's letter to the editor by Grace Anansi, that Alameda Hospital closed its maternity ward. I confirmed this by calling the hospital; they have been closed since 2001. I am guessing that this was in response to the dozens of terrorist attacks that rocked our nation that year.

Most Right-Thinking Alamedans are long past their child-bearing years, so normally this would be of no concern. However, I realized that since 2001, there have been no native Alamedans being born. Think about this for a moment: That means that all of the kindergarten children you see running around were born in foreign cities like Oakland, or, worse yet, Berkeley.

What will this mean for future generations? Of course in the short term, we have plenty of citizens whose parents and grandparents were born in here, but in one hundred years' time, there will be no second- and third-generation Alamedans to run our city. The lines of ancestry will be broken: the second- and third-generation Alamedans of today are giving birth to first-generation strangers. It won't be long before there are no Alamedans left!

I weep for the future of our city. We need a fresh supply of Alameda- born babies so that in the next century, their grandchildren will be qualified to be our leaders. What can we do?


With great sorrow,

Mimi Dorchester