Congratulations to Ed Reavie and the City of St. Ignace for 30-some years of a successful car show every June in St. Ignace. My husband and I visit regularly to the area from Arizona, since I love to come back home and he loves to visit Mackinac.

We are taking the idea of the car show to his hometown in Tillamook, Oregon, and suggest to their Chamber of Commerce that they run with it and contact Mr. Reavie for consultation. It is a perfect “success” story for St. Ignace and one the Oregon coastal town of Tillamook could benefit from, too. They are 15 minutes from the ocean and have some tourists, maybe a “sister city” to St. Ignace someday is another idea.

My husband and I visit St. Ignace and Tillamook each summer and can pack the same clothes and plan to do almost the same things [while there]. When we visit both areas, we enjoy walking, bicycling, golf, and activities around water. In Oregon, we walk on the Pacific Ocean beach and in St. Ignace we go to the Sand Dunes and Lake Michigan, but we have just as good a time in both locations and we see old high school friends and family, too. And, of course, there is plenty of fish and seafood on these trips. What a good life we have in Michigan and Oregon.

How wonderful it is for both of us that, later in life, we can share our hometowns with each other and yet feel at home in both places. The car show is a perfect opportunity for Tillamook to be known for more than cheese, just as St. Ignace is known for more than “the island” because the car show has put it on the map!

Yes, Toto, you can go home and have a lot of great things to do when you are there, even 45 years later. I was graduated from LaSalle in 1968.

Patricia Cronan Brooks

Scottsdale, Arizona