A Letter To The Editor

Hi-

I read your blog regularly, and I'm not even a resident of Salisbuy- in fact, I live in The Northern Neck of Virginia, but I regularly visit Salisbury as part of my job. I'm an itenerant merchant, and I visit conveince stores in the Deleware and Eastern Shores of Maryland and Virginia on a regular schedule.

I was kind of taken aback by the negativism I've encountered in Salisbury, and I don't quite know why. The people are great, good hard working honest American dream chasers, like me, but there seems to be an underlying discontent with there town---they say the traffic is horrible, the streets aren't safe, the press and the goernment ignore their needs,etc, etc. There's a pretty easily found website which lists all sorts of cities across America, with the usual demographic stats one would expect, and an area where people can leave comments. and there is not one positive comment about Salisbury.

Being an itenerant merchant, and one whose focus is on conveinece stores, my interest gets piqued when someone starts mentioning high crime rates, so I did some research of my own. A simple google search of "conveince store robberies salisbury md" brought me to the cold case page for the Salisbury Police.

It was here that I read about the case of Irma Jane Smith who was killed in a Shore Stop in 1994. I found it kind of distressing that this person is the charter member of your cold case club, the first on the list, and there is almost no information about who she was or what happened to her that night in 1994. For some odd reason, that disturbs me.

I mean, here is a person who is trying just to make an honest living and working at the c store in a shady area of town and gets killed. There, but for the grace of God, goes you or I, right?

Who was the person? Has her own community forgotten her merely 16 years later? More importantly, what did her death teach the citizens of Salisbury, Md? Was it entirely in vain that she bled to death on the floor of a cstore?

Now, I know that I am an outsider, someone who comes and goes thrrough your community and only sees a glimpse of the whole picture, but sometimes it takes someone who is not in the picture to point out things others can't see.

Don't you think that it would beneft the community as a whole to remember viligantly those who have perished needlesly in the face of violence? Dosen't the community at large have a reponsibility to itself to remember those who fall needlesly? I guess what I'm trying to say is that if the community seems complacent about something as drastic as being stabbed to death while at work, it might seem to people who are inclined to act in this antisocial way that the citizens of Salisbury just don't care if you gun one of their own down.

Before you start beating me up, and I'm sure you will, let me stress that I'm not condemning your city or it's residents. I was deeply moved at how people turned out selflessy on Christmas morning to look for the little girl who was murdered last year. I know in my heart and from talking to people that the citizens of this city are much like the citizens of any city, but for a town of around 25,000 people, a murder should be a huge and jarring event especially when it is not gang related or drug related....it's a robbery and murder of a person just trying to eek by, and that is highly offensive.

I was a journalist years ago, and to this day have the reporter's curiosity.When I read the blurb from The SPD Cold Case File regarding Ms. Smith, I tried to find online information about the case, I mean 1994 was not that long ago, but there is nothing. Someone out there knows what happened to Irma Jane Smith, but the case is so buried, what are the chances that someone will come across it? Ms Smith was someones sister or mother or aunt or best freind....something. But, now, she's just a mention in a three paragraph article on The SPD Website. If you put a face and personality and realness to that mention, then maybe somebody who knows something feels guilty enough to come forward. Maybe.