I moved a staggering number of times before I landed back in Wareham 8 years ago, content to leave the daily uproar of news reporting behind. Channeling your neighbor's pain is never pleasant. Filing and forgetting from a place you love is impossible.

Wareham, Massachusetts has not seen this kind of development pressure and upheaval since its 1905-1920 beach building boom, with staring roles for some of the same villains; Brockton developers. Selectman Sauvageau's own Swifts Beach in 1910 remains recognizably unchanged.

What has changed is ordinary working stiffs - public servants, residents and seasonal visitors alike - began talking to and trusting their neighbors for the first time, most of them still strangers.

I first faced the people I wrote about every day 35 years ago and I've worked on far flung computer networks 25 years. Wareham accomplished more in six months. Now it'll have state and federal help reclaiming its community and digging out of the wreckage Mr. Sauvageau leaves behind.

Thank you from the bottom of my heart, every last one of you.

I am not moving, by god, not this time.

Bill Whitehouse

Auto-edited on 2020-08-11 to update URLs