Editor’s Note: The following speech comes from Duane Crockett, a man of God and teacher at Tangier Combined School, who offered these inspiring remarks during Thursday’s Tangier Town Council meeting. Duane, well said!
Town Council — thanks for your service!
To the Mayor and Council of the Town of Tangier:
I have no questions to ask, and no business to discuss. My primary purpose in speaking this evening is to offer words of encouragement to you – our elected officials.
It seems with every town meeting, the news you share gets more difficult to hear, as I’m sure to you, it becomes more difficult to tell. No one here envies you or wishes we were you, and there might be moments in your life that you are asking yourselves the question “What in the world was I thinking when I ran!” Your lives were no doubt more peaceful and less hectic before taking on yourselves the burden of the Town of Tangier.
Now, what do we, on this side of the table have to say – those of us who do not receive the awful phone calls, read the overwhelming letters, meet with the people who can shut down any part of the town with the stroke of a pen? First,
we say thank you for running. You didn’t have to run, but you did! I didn’t.
Second, thank you for the transparency. As soon as you know something, you let us know. We are informed.
I would imagine the dread you feel, knowing what you have to share with the public, but you do – and strangely enough, that is very liberating for you, once you are able to get that out there to us. When the time comes that your sleep is affected, your appetite is affected and your spirits are lower than usual, remember – you can do this job. We have full faith and confidence in your ability.
Before John Smith sailed up Chesapeake Bay in 1608 and named us the Russell islands… before we were ever incorporated as a town on February 6th, 1915, God knew these dark days would come. He hasn’t been cut off from any information that you may seem to have been cut off from, or that we have. As Mordecai told his niece Queen Esther thousands of years ago: “and who knoweth whether thou art come to the Kingdom for such a time as this?”
I believe God has a plan and a purpose for this Island. I don’t believe God is ready for Tangier to come to its end. I believe he will rule and overrule, and I believe he will sustain. As the scripture says, I believe that He raised his people up to lead and He has raised you. You, who have raised families, ran businesses, hard workers, who have lost family members and more, who have taken care of suffering parents, who have dealt with the health crisis of children, one who had a very hopeless case with a brain tumor, another whose child quit breathing unexpectedly, some of you who have had cancers twice in a lifetime, unexpected health crisis, heart stopped beating in the back of an ambulance – people who
were hard to wake back after anesthesia, after undergoing surgery.
We know you will do well. None of these things that you have told us tonight were worse than those things that I have mentioned to you before.
Several years ago, I had come in from a vacation and was spending the night in Salisbury, Maryland. I got a phone call about something I was dealing with at the time. It was very overwhelming news. When I got off the phone, my first question was “Lord, how in the world am I going to be able to endure this?”
Almost immediately, the words of an old hymn came to my mind, that I share with you tonight. It said: “You are ready to go up and take the country and possess the land from Jordan to the sea. Though the giants may be there, our
way to hinder, our God has given us the victory.”
I quote to you from Romans Chapter VIII: “If God be for us, who can be against us?” I have to have the faith, as a child of God, that he is for this community, and he is not gonna let us go. So, God bless you, Ooker, Sharon, Kelly, Beth, Anna,
Tommy and Tracy. You are in our thoughts and prayers.
Be encouraged. You are doing it, and you are doing it very well!
Tangier Island, Virginia 