On the property of the Manor Golf Club, in Farmville, is Dunnington Mansion. The building was cared for from 1743 until the Manor purchased it in 2000. Initially, the mansion was intended to be the ‘jewel’ of the golf course, but the money dried up. Now the formerly beautiful and historic ‘Dunnington’ is an abandoned and crumbling heap.
Green Front displays its wares through nearly a million square feet of showrooms throughout 13 historic downtown buildings in Farmville. A faded, barely-legible sign is painted across the brick of one of the largest buildings that reads ‘Dunnington Tobacco.’ Most rightly assume the building was owned by a tobacco company in the past; few today know who the Dunnington’s were.
In the 1900s, Walter Dunnington was one of the most prominent tobacco barons of his day. Despite his worldwide renown in the tobacco industry and his influence in the growth of Farmville, his legacy is all but forgotten. According to Dr. Hidalgo of MIT, even most famous people can only expect to be remembered by the general populous for five to thirty years after their death. Like abandoned buildings, the memories of those who leave this world crumble until there is nothing left.
Scripture tells us on earth we “are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes” (James 4:14) and our “days are like grass. . . like a flower . . . the wind passes over it, and it is gone, and its place knows it no more” (Psalm 103:15). But the righteous “will be remembered forever” (Psalm 112:6). God tells His people “you will not be forgotten by me” (Isaiah 44:21) and for those who die in the Lord “their deeds follow them” in Heaven (Revelation 14:13). God is not done with the righteous, they do not crumble, and they are never forgotten.