Editor,

While looking up something completely unrelated, I came across a letter regarding jet noise at Outlying Field Coupeville.

It seems the complaints center around folks having their tranquil lives disturbed by the Navy practicing touch and gos at OLF Coupeville.

I don’t recall the exact year, but it must have been about 30 years ago — give or take — that a woman wrote to the Whidbey News-Times whining about jet noise.

As I recall, the noise was disturbing her vacation time on the island. I wrote a letter to the editor at that time expressing my opinion.

Now, so many years later, coming across this particular article out of the blue, I must comment again. The animals, birds, planes and the base were most likely there long before those whining about the noise were.

Where I live now, people whine about train whistles disturbing their businesses or the smell of cows wafting through their neighborhood.

Those are minor things.

However, the sound of those jets and the practicing they do is never minor. It is for one purpose and one purpose only — to protect your freedom.

I would highly recommend these whiny folks think about the alternative if these young people in the military were not willing to do what they do.

I do believe it is a much more difficult job to be in the military today, than when I was in.

Instead of whining about your flowers, peace and quiet and inflated dangers of jet noise, I suggest you hush up and move on if you don’t like it. There used to be a sign near the back gate of the base which said: “Please pardon our noise — it’s the sound of freedom.”

Well, as I believe I said in my letter all those years ago and will say again to Ms. Wolfe and others: The sound of those jets really is the sound of freedom. Listen to it and be grateful.

Karen Pixler

Fort Collins, Colo.