Editor,

In the Whidbey News-Times April 23 article, “COER takes jet noise complaints to Health board,” the article says “COER presented the board with a list of things it can do to educate and protect the public, including closing Rhododendron Park.”

Ever since they opened Rhododendron Park it has been a place where families could have a picnic or walk in the park, but mostly where the Central Whidbey Little League baseball and softball practices and games are held.

I’ve lived in Coupeville for eight years, and COER is now trying close the park where hundreds have played and, hopefully, hundreds more to come.

Reading this article not only bewildered me, but has frustrated me as well. This is the place where my friends and I played baseball, and just the thought of closing it sends a shiver through my spine. They say it is to protect us from jet noise, but I don’t want to be protected by a group of self-serving people, people who would do this just to make a statement.

By closing a children’s park, they actually insult the ones they say they want to protect. It seems COER considers the hard-working pilots who fly these planes to be villains. I think they are guardians, and their power to guard is derived from the EA-18G Growlers.

OLF was opened not to anger a small percentage of residents of Coupeville, but to help the ones who protect the country to practice.

The members of COER, to me, do not represent the community as a whole, and certainly not myself. They seem to blame everything on the jets.

They find anything to complain about. They act like children, though real children would not propose to close a park.

I love Rhododendron Park and, yes, even jet noise, and so do others.

Proposing to take away the park is unfair to the ones, like myself, who actually use the park.

I want COER to realize the world doesn’t revolve around them, and instead of insisting they are the majority realize they are actually a minority on jet noise and are creating a huge ordeal over what I see as one of the world’s tiniest problems. They hurt, not help, and that hurts others who don’t want them speaking for them.

COER, I’m disappointed that, even as adults, you still haven’t learned to take anything other than yourselves into consideration.

Like a child that doesn’t get their way, they want to take their ball — and my park — away.

Luke Martin, freshman

Oak Harbor High School