If someone were to ask you to name the most significant thing to take place here in our area — be it city, county or region — over the last hundred years, what would be your response?

Just take a moment and consider what your answer would be.

For me, this is easy. Very. The most significant “happening” over the years is the evolution of East Carolina University. This includes, in addition to undergraduate and graduate opportunities, the medical and dental schools.

It is not a stretch, hyperbole, to say that East Carolina is the engine that drives the East.

When you consider everything that is directly, or even indirectly, a part of, or has some tie or connection with that multifaceted entity, the enormity of the dollars it creates and then spreads throughout the region is almost incalculable. Imagine, just imagine how things would be if there were no ECU. Consider just what ECU has meant to the education, health and welfare of the people of our region, and beyond. That Greenville is now the medical hub of the East is no empty boast. What all of this has come to mean for all of us is hard, almost impossible, to fully understand and appreciate.

Then there’s that old misconception, passed down over the generations, that “Washington could have had East Carolina, but …”

Well. In a word, malarkey. Not so. Absolutely not so, and there is documented evidence to prove this. (“East Carolina University — The Formative Years, 1907-1982” by Mary Jo Jackson Bratton)

To the contrary, (as regards that “but”) there were leaders here who attempted to have the “powers-that-be��� choose one of two sites in Washington. (p. 53 “East Carolina …”) Other towns and cities also vied to be the home of East Carolina Teachers Training School. Among them were Elizabeth City, Kinston, New Bern, Rocky Mount, Tarboro and Edenton. “Most people felt the choice would be focused on three main contenders: Greenville, Kinston, and Washington.” (p. 54 “East Carolina …”)

Our little riverside town really wanted this new school. “Washington was eager to have the school. To achieve this goal, it offered $75,000 and the choice of two extensive sites, one of 200 acres and the other 133. (p. 53 “East Carolina …”)

Oh, yes. We wanted it.

All that was over a century ago. Greenville is now the dynamo of the region.

Let us not lament losing what is now ECU, however. Consider the quality of life we enjoy here on the banks of the Pamlico, and indeed, throughout much of our county.

Plus, we don’t have to endure the stress and rigors of Greenville Boulevard on a daily basis.

Now, that’s something to be thankful about.