DEAR ABBY: I have kept a letter you ran in Newsday (New York) on Aug. 20, 1982, and believe it is even more appropriate today.
If you agree, please consider rerunning it.-- JACK PLETMAN, HUNTINGTON STATION, N.Y.
DEAR MR. PLETMAN: I agree. Thank you for sending it.
DEAR ABBY: This is a letter I would like my neighbors to see. Perhaps your column will reach them:
"Dear Neighbors: I am reminiscing today over the 25 years that we have been your neighbors. When we moved here from out of state, we waited for you to welcome us. You never did.
"We are a decent, respectable family. Maybe our children were a little noisy at times, and our grass was uncut once in a while, and our religion was different from yours -- so you ignored us.
"Events in our lives -- births, graduations, weddings, deaths -- came and went with no acknowledgments from you.
"Now that we are all old and the children are gone from the street, shall we be hypocritical and mourn your deaths, or regret your moving?
"I think not. We are all poorer for having ignored one another, but we survived. May our children extend the hand of friendship to their neighbors." -- AGNES IN CULVER CITY, CALIF.
DEAR AGNES: What's done is done, but times have changed. Neighbors need each other today for security as well as for the sake of old-fashioned friendship.
This is a plea for people to reach out and offer their friendship to the newcomers in the neighborhood. And if the welcome is slow in coming, the newcomers should initiate the dialogue.
Nothing separates like silence.