So I sat down and wrote me a letter to send to Richard and Rhonda . . .

Cove_17, originally uploaded by Stephanie A. Richer.

Dear Mr. and Mrs. Martin:

There are simply not a lot of folks with your names living in Crestview, FL, and it is an easy enough search on the Internet to find a Richard and a Rhonda with matching telephone numbers and addresses in public records, that coincidentally live in Crestview, Fl, so I am fairly certain that you are the ones who scribbled that graffiti back in 2008. If, by chance, I am mistaken, you may disregard this letter.

Do you remember where you wrote it? In case you do not, let me remind you - you wrote it on the back wall of the Primitive Baptist Church in Cade's Cove, located in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Maybe you did not read the tourist pamphlets that are available for free, and certainly there was no ranger standing nearby as they would have prevented your vandalism, but this is not a relic of times past. If you walked through the cemetery, which I am willing to assume you did, you would have noticed recent graves of persons with family names matching those of much older graves. The Primitive Baptist Church, you see, remains an active house of worship for the families whose ancestral roots are in those mountains. Weddings, christenings, funerals - all take place in that church. The same church that you have vandalized needlessly. It does not matter if your graffiti was meant to memorialize for time immortal whatever great passion exists between you two - graffiti is the human equivalent of a dog marking its territory. And the fact that you chose to deface a place where people come to practice their faith makes it all the more disgusting.

I would also like to add that it is illegal as well. 36 Code of Federal Regulations 2.31(a)(3) expressly prohibits vandalism, defined to be "[d]estroying, injuring, defacing, or damaging property or real property." Your valentine to yourselves falls within that category easily.

Yes, there was a great deal of graffiti on that back wall, years of teenage lovers carving their initials or using a ballpoint pen to profess undying fidelity to another. But your graffiti stood out for me - you took the time to use bright red marker, so it was easily noticeable. Judging from the picture, you used up a good square foot of space at eye level. And you did not stop at simply "R.M + R.M." or "Richard loves Rhonda." No, you wrote a little narrative, identifying yourself, your home town, the date of your marriage, and how the two of you were celebrating "25 years of wedding bliss together [sic]." 25 years? That means that you were folk around the age of 40 when you vandalized this church, and not a pair of ignorant youngsters - instead, it seems it was a case of ignorant and selfish middle-aged people. I wonder if you walked into your wedding site on July 30, 1983 and had to pass someone else's graffiti from 1958. Probably not, but it is a shame that a bride today - or new parents, or a family mourning - has to see that.

I thought about whether I should send you this letter. Maybe it finds you in hard financial times, or maybe in poor health, or perhaps even one of you has passed on. Our lives are not always happy; this I know, as I am of your same age group. But I use the standard I would want for myself, and if I had done something wrong like this, such that it is disrespectful to the memory of those buried outside that church and to those worshipping in that church, I would want it said to me, no matter how uncomfortable it would be in my current circumstances.

You intentionally defaced the church so your names would be seen and noticed. Well, you succeeded. They were noticed and I just want you to know your act of vandalism does not serve as a commemoration of your happy day, but a memorial to your crude and selfish behavior. That is your souvenir of your second honeymoon.

Sincerely,

Stephanie A. Richer

Powell, TN