I do not know when it began, but I was
working in Littler Rock Arkansas's Model Cities program when I first
recognized I had a serious case of Acronym-Allergy. Acronyms make me
itch and sneeze. Thus when I was staff for two citizen committees
(one, housing; the other infrastructure) covering the two target
neighborhoods in Little Rock I refused to voice acronyms in this
acronym infested world.
I erroneously thought that long-term I
would win the battle. Aware that personal computers could not be many
years or decades off, I was convinced they would obviate the need for
acronyms. It might always be faster to type “EPA”, but
the computer would seamlessly change that to “Environmental
Protection Agency”, and when we spoke we would
use the full term for the sake of clarity. I could not have been more
wrong, but that sad truth is almost irrelevant to this story.
I worked weekly with my committees over
the year I was in Little Rock, never wavering in my refusal to use
acronyms. Others on the staff, did use them, of course. The one heard
most frequently was “HUD”—rhyming with “mud.” I could not completely shelter the members of
my committees from this abandonment of the English language because
there were occasional full-up community meetings in which the
hud-word was uttered. All anybody ever heard from me, however, was
“The Department of Housing and Urban Development”. This can be a
mouthful, I admit, but I believe it rolled off my tongue as if it
were a line of poetry or a song lyric.
Over the course of the year, each
committee and its staff person developed a chapter for the plan in
which we would ask the Department of Housing and Urban Development
and other federal agencies for millions of dollars to give Little
Rock and our target neighborhoods a grand leap toward eliminating
urban problems which, in my domains, included deteriorated housing,
flood hazards, water and sewer inadequacies, street and traffic
problems. My committees and I felt pretty good about what we were
proposing, and we knew we would likely get the necessary money
because the War on Poverty had made Model Cities its poster children.
If we did our work well, our proposal would be met with the
rubber-stamp, “APPROVED”, at federal agencies—including the
lead agency, The Department of Housing and Urban Development. We did
do our work well!
After much work, we came to the final
meeting of the year. The combined membership of all committees from
both neighborhoods assembled at a local school to vote on the whole
package that we were to send off to the federal government: Little
Rock's Model Cities Plan. There were a few sticking points. I don't
remember what they were, but they were nothing that threatened to
doom the plan. They did threaten to drag out the meeting until the
wee hours of the morning. To the rescue came Mr. Liggens, a star
member of one of my committees. Believing there had been enough
debate, he rose to speak the powerful few words that brought the plan
quickly to a vote and won its final approval.
I have special reason to remember those
words; they not only warm my heart but also give me a life lesson in
humility:
“We have talked long
enough,” said Mr. Liggens,
“It is time to vote to send
this plan off to Mr. Hud--or whatever his name is!”
(c) from date of posting, by Bob Komives, Fort Collins