Remembering Gerry Connolly

May 21 marked one year since the death of our friend and neighbor, Congressman Gerry Connolly. Neighbors remember his quick wit, fierce intelligence, and dedication to his community.

Former MCA officer Jim Oppenheimer sent us the following letter from Gerry, saying “The message he gave us then could not be more apt today,” and asked that we send it out once again “to honor our neighbor and the principles he stood for.”

This letter was first published in the 2018 Mantua Directory, and we now republish it with Gerry’s family’s permission:

Dear Mantua Neighbors,

The Bishop of Geneva, Saint Francis de Sales, had a saying: “Bloom where you’re planted.” Later, Mary Engelbreit would popularize the phrase. It is one that I strive to both emulate and instill in others. My time in Mantua as President of the MCA could not be a more illustrative example of the importance of living by those words. Though I had only been in the community for a short time when I was elected President, I took the job as a way to get engaged in my new neighborhood and see what I could do to make the lives of Mantua residents a little better. The first year of my presidency was the year that we discovered oil in Mantua. Overnight, meetings that had been sparsely attended were filled to capacity. I found myself going from presenting about membership dues to presenting about the carcinogenic effects of fuel oil and what steps we as a community could take to address it.

Eventually, working together with our state, local and federal partners, we were able to contain the spill and remediate the damage caused. This experience has been one that I dwell upon, because it not only inspired my love for local government and my desire to run for elected office, it taught me lessons that I have applied every day in public service. All of this was possible because I made the decision to get involved in my community and because we as a community took action and did not just accept that the situation was beyond our control.

This level of awareness and engagement should be a model for how every community in America can enact civic change. Our democracy indeed depends on an active and informed population that voices its opinions and works for our communities and other causes that are important. Surrendering that power to a bureaucracy or even elected leadership is a dangerous precedent to set. It is in conditions like those that authoritarianism thrives. Indeed, that notion of self-governance was one of the things which was truly remarkable about the American experiment.

Our Founders believed that the people, when properly informed, could be the guardians of their own liberty and democracy and indeed capable of their own self-government. In a world dominated by monarchies, this idea was truly revolutionary. That is the legacy that we as citizens have inherited. It falls to us to continue to uphold it for future generations. The best way to begin is to bloom where you’re planted and get involved. You never know the experiences that await you or the kind of impact you may be able to have on someone’s life simply because you made that decision.

With Warmest Regards,

Gerald E. Connolly
Member of Congress
11th District, Virginia