To the Editor:
I am a citizen of Sylvania only by heritage, but it is a heritage that
extends back more than 150 years, almost to the very founding of your city.
My father, Lou Revere Crandall, was born and raised in Sylvania as were his
father and his father before him back to my great, great grandfather, George
Martin Crandall, who was the original settler. It is about preserving a
tangible and beautiful piece of this heritage that I am writing you.
I understand that my father¹s boyhood home at 5362 South Main Street is now
on the market and that there is some chance that it might be sold for
demolition. This is the house about which my father told the happiest tales
of his childhood and which he bitterly regretted leaving when the family
circumstances were reduced by a tragic accident to his father. It still
remains a lovely house today, as I rediscovered when the owner, the Vogts,
with the graciousness that everyone in Sylvania has always shown us on our
too rare visits, received us a few years ago and gave my wife and myself the
grand tour.
Obviously the house owners and the Sylvania community are the only ones with
any rights to decide how to dispose of the property to best serve their
interests. However, I do feel it would be a tragedy if the house were
destroyed. While Dad eventually left Sylvania for a very successful national
and international career as a builder (some of his awards and memorabilia
are in the Sylvania Heritage Museum), this house remains a key part of his
past and hence of my past. I believe it is also a key part of Sylvania¹s
past, a gracious, unique and irreplaceable mansion dating back to the
earliest days of the city with close ties to many, many Sylvania families,
not just the Crandalls, and even ties to National USA history through its
reported role as an underground railway stop for escaped slaves before the
Civil War.
If the house can be saved, we would certainly be willing to make a financial
contribution to the effort.

Jack Crandall
Graniteville, S.C.