To the Editor:
The recent editorial “The Skate Park is Open. Now What?” in the Lockhart Post-Register (Nov. 19, 2009) presents an admirable challenge to the youth of Lockhart to respect the newly constructed skate park, and public property in general, a challenge we salute. Unfortunately the editorial also emphasizes a “worried” view of the Lockhart skate park, and a critical view of skaters overall, which we do not share.

The Lockhart skate park has been open for only a week; yet we have seen hundreds of skaters from all over the country come to Lockhart for the sole purpose of skating the Lockhart skate park. Not just skaters from all around Texas (i.a. Houston, Dallas, Austin, San Antonio, Round Rock, New Braunfels, San Marcos, etc.) but as far away as California, Oklahoma - even Oregon and Washington. And from these long-distance travelers we have heard nothing but words of praise and admiration about the perfection of the construction and the originality of the design. Typically we hear something like: “How can such a small town build such an incredible skate park?”

The answer is vision. Vision from our elected officials, notably the Mayor of Lockhart and virtually every member of the Lockhart City Council; followed by years of COMMUNITY ACTIVISM; support from local area citizens and businesses (including the Lockhart Post-Register itself); and significant GRANTS from LCRA and the Tony Hawk Foundation; all of which helped to turn this vision into a reality.

Who wins?

The big winners are the people of Lockhart; the parents and their kids, for which see James Bliss’ glowing report on the skate park Grand Opening (“Letter to the Editor” Nov. 19, 2009). Whereas neither James Bliss nor his son currently skate, they were absolutely ecstatic about the recreational possibilities of the skate park for citizens of Lockhart. We were at the Grand Opening also, and we watched 100+ smiling and laughing people who were enjoying being outside with their kids, engaging in a good, clean recreational sport.

Other winners include the merchants of Lockhart, who are selling goods and services to all the out-of-town skaters who are now coming to Lockhart just to skate the Lockhart skate park.

We were interested to know how these out-of-town people heard about the Lockhart skate park. The answer is simple word-of-mouth, and the Internet.

Of the latter, we found three websites that host electronic bulletin boards, and the discussions about the Lockhart skate park had a total of 21,892 hits — this gigantic number suggests that continued “worrying” about waning interest in the Lockhart skate park is unfounded.

These numbers, while significant, are less important than what’s actually happening at the skate park: we’ve been out to the site every day, and every day that it hasn’t rained we’ve seen people out there having fun; skaters and non-skaters, people young and old, from Lockhart, from all over Texas, and beyond.

We have yet to see the “rude, disrespectful and mean-spirited” skaters that the editorial would have us “worry” about.
Karron Degraffenried, president
Michael Laird, vice president
On-A-Roll, Inc.
Lockhart