Message from Gordy Bunch, The Woodlands, Texas

September 21, 2017 RE: Article in Houston Chronicle

I’m Gordy Bunch and I want to apologize for the comments I made at a meeting the other night regarding the potential moving of statues to our community.

I want to provide context that the only interest that I would ever have in such divisive statues is if they could be used for education purposes in a museum setting where we could educate current and future generations regarding the failures of our past and our history. I do not condone or accept racism, hate groups, neo-Nazis, KKK or any divisive group.  I’m not looking to celebrate the Confederacy; I’m not looking to divide our community. I believe that there is no support for relocation of these statues, whether in a museum or otherwise and I can commit that there is zero chance now that these items will ever set foot into our community.

I apologize to the Township Board, our Township Staff, our residents in our business community for the negative headlines that this has caused. I want to make sure that all of our community knows that my only intent was to use these for education purposes. I even woke up my kids this morning and sat down with them and I had them read the article in the paper to make sure that I explained to them what I had in my heart and my mind. I think that we too often ignore past failures and I think if there would have been an opportunity to create dialogue and a venue where we could fully expose transparently the failures of our past and the things that we have worked through to come together as a state and a country that they might have had some potential value. I now see the error in that thought and I apologize again for creating this divisive issue within our community that so easily could have been avoided. I want to make sure that if you have any questions, I am happy to answer any of those and that our family, our community is committed to the diversity that George Mitchel envisioned.

I stand behind our Proclamation on Diversity and Inclusiveness, in no way shape or form, wanted to convey that our community was a safe haven for the Confederacy. I do not believe that. I do not have that in my heart and I apologize and I do deserve the feedback that was given to me, given the nature of the article and the lack of context. I do accept responsibility for those statements. I hope that I have clarified what my intentions were and I want to also reiterate that there is no official offer to any entity to transfer statues, relics or plaques to our community. This was not a fully vetted idea. This was not ever on a Board Agenda. I was in a meeting where there was discussion regarding whether removal of plaques, statues and artifacts that ranged a number of different issues, not just Confederate issues and in the desire to try to populate, or have options to populate a museum, I made those comments, which now I see were divisive and hurtful and I apologize again for that.