PRINTEditor's letter: The future of my hometown
Columbia and MU continue to change
Melissa Klauda
August 9, 2012 | 12:00 a.m. CST
For many of us at Vox, Columbia is a temporary stop, mid-Missouri a means to an end. We come, we write, we conquer, or something like that. But for 26 years, Columbia has been more than that for me. Columbia is my home.
I wrote this letter after a 2 a.m. drive through the neighborhood where I grew up. I can remember a time when Columbia’s population hovered around 60,000, and as I rolled past the house where I spent my childhood, that old Columbia came back to me. The memory was fleeting, though. By the time I returned home to the neighborhood that didn’t exist when I was born, I was back in reality, back in the present. And thinking about the future.
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That’s the subject of this week’s special issue: the potential the future holds. We’ve done our best to find stories about those who will shape Columbia for the next generation. Drs. Mawhinney, Katti and Prather, for example, whose research into treatment methods might make plagues of the present a thing of the past, are moving us forward in ways previously thought unimaginable.
We also spoke with Mike Alden about the future of Columbia’s flagship athletics program. I remember sitting on the hill on Nov. 8, 1997, and being trampled by fans who believed MU had just upset top-ranked Nebraska. Fifteen years later, Nebraska’s in the Big 10, MU’s heading into its first season in the SEC, and all that MU fans have always known is in the past.
For some, that’s a scary thought; there’s comfort in familiarity. But the potential realities an imagination can conjure can also be exciting, and if our stories this week are any indication, the future of my hometown is a bright one.
