By D.G. Martin

“That couldn’t happen if you moved every three years.”

Reynolds Price, the late novelist and Duke professor, was talking to a group at a Southern Writers Conference in Chapel Hill about memories.

Our memories are our treasures. They are who we are. Looking backwards some of us see our parents, brothers, sisters, grandparents, cousins, longtime friends, teachers, preachers and the places we knew them — home, church, school, stores and fields. Those people and places of growing up define us. They are our anchors. They are our foundations. They are our roots. At least they are, if we have those memories — if we remember where we grew up.

But fewer and fewer of us know where we are from. The average American moves every three years. You can’t let you roots grow too deep if you move that often.

If you move every three years and live in a new neighborhood where everybody else is new, Price says, you are not going to have the same kind of memories as those who grew up in one place.

Does it make a difference? I think it does. I can’t prove it, but look around at the people who are making a difference in North Carolina — the best business leaders, our best political leaders, our best teachers and writers.

Don’t a disproportionate number of them come from small towns and farms?

What explains their success in the development of leaders for the rest of us?

Some big city snobs would say that these leaders have had to overcome their culturally deprived backgrounds. Look at the small towns, they say, and see nothing happening, backward schools, no theaters, no big libraries, no big-time sports.

Nothing there? Nothing but the stable nurturing that creates the self-defining memories that Reynolds Price talked about.

North Carolina’s small towns and rural communities are the state’s “people estuaries.”

Estuaries are those protected brackish waters along our coast, which, with the marshes, swamps and backwaters, are the most efficient producers of food in the state. They are a critical link in our food chain. We often think of those areas as underdeveloped backwaters. But they are irreplaceable treasures where the richness and stability of life makes for one of the earth’s most productive ecosystems.

Reynolds Price was right. Those nurturing memories that the small towns make possible are important in giving people a sense of who they are. People who have a sense of who they are become our best leaders, which may explain why small towns are so successful in producing North Carolina’s leaders.

They are our “people estuaries.”

D.G. Martin, a retired lawyer, served as UNC-System’s vice president for public affairs and hosted PBS-NC’s North Carolina Bookwatch.