On 'Goodbye, St. Louis,' by Fredrick McKissack Jr.

• Author: Stine, Bill
• Position: WE HEAR YOU - Letter to the editor

I just read your article on St. Louis. It expressed some things I was feeling that were as yet unarticulated. I have been wanting to leave my hometown but have been squarely on the fence. You explained to me why I actually must leave. Maybe one day we will wave to each other across some quiet cul-de-sac somewhere. Thanks for getting me off that fence, my friend.

--Bill Stine

I just finished your piece. As a non-practicing writer and appreciator of beautiful prose, I would like to commend you. I am sorry for the things that happened to you and your family. I grew up in North County St. Louis from 1980 to 1998.

I am from the flip side of the coin, and the whispering you mentioned also plagued me. If I had a way to assuage the wrongs that have been done to you, I would gladly do it. I do not know you personally, but as a fellow human being I understand what it is to suffer, and it hurts in my soul to think of someone special like you suffering because of ignorance, fear, and misplaced hate.

The best to you, sir, and to a future where we no longer have to hope so damn hard.

--Chris De Joe

Just a quick note to tell you how impressed I was by your article on St. Louis. I grew up on Delmar in U City, and left town when I was a late teen. Your description of the promise of the place brought me back to summer nights listening to cicadas and catching fireflies. Maybe it is nostalgia but I also feel that sadness when I watched the coverage of Ferguson--something hopeful and promising does seem to be lost.

You say the opposite in your piece, but maybe St. Louis does need you after all. Keep up the good work.

--Sean Kisker

I grew up in East St. Louis; I'll be seventy in the fall. But I share with you so many of the memories of St. Louis, and I know full well most of which you speak.

You made a technical misstatement, which I thought you might not mind having corrected. There actually were no World Fair pavilions still intact when you and I...