By Len Lazarick
When I tell people I’ve lived in Columbia 43 years, some say, “Oh you must be a pioneer.” But a pioneer, in old-Columbia speak, is technically someone who moved here in its first year, 1967–68. A few of those 2,200 souls are left, and all can tell you of the first store, the first school, the first this and the first that.
But this monthly series of essays leading to Columbia’s 50th birthday next June is not meant as a piece of nostalgia. Many books and hundreds of articles have focused on the first decades of Columbia, the land acquisition, the planning. These essays are about Columbia as a lived experience that brings us to the present, with a long view of how we got here and how it evolved from the plan, and in many cases was not planned at all.
This is called a “memoir” because it is neither complete nor unbiased. It is Len Lazarick’s interpretation of Columbia’s 50 years, or at least some aspects of it, fact-based as much as possible.
MORE at MarylandReporter.com
