To the editor:

Please be assured that the person wishing Nichols Boat Works to leave the area (Letters, March 9) does not speak for the rest of us. What he presents as fact is, in fact, pure fiction. Nichols provides not just some jobs but, with more than 200 workers, is the second largest employer in Island County after the Navy. Nichols products are well-made, innovative and are marvels of engineering. Nichols makes everything from sailboats to large ferries.

The idea that a tourist area with shops and a boardwalk would somehow make Freeland a thriving city is even more fiction. Doesn’t this person know that tourism on Whidbey is a seasonal thing? Doesn’t he know that there is a beautiful park with a public dock, a playground and a building with public bathrooms just a quarter mile down the road? And bedroom communities already abound along the shores of Holmes Harbor.

The excellent stores and shops in Freeland such as Payless, Ace Hardware, Linds, Frontier Lumber, Webb’s and many more give ample testament to the fact that Nichols workers are important to the local economy. And that, good sir, is the real truth.

BOB AND KATIE HARPER

Freeland