Dear Editor,

"You Don't Know What You've Got (Until You Lose It)" was a Top 10 Billboard hit for Ral Donner in 1961. Those words have never rung truer than with the recently announced closing of our Oakhurst Met Cinema.

The community owes Ray and Irma Martinez and their family a deep debt of gratitude for keeping the enterprise going as long as they possibly could in the face of what turned out to be insurmountable odds. It was always more than "just a business" for Ray and Irma, as it was to the Murphys before them.

An aching, poignant emptiness fills the center of town. Things are not the same. The Met is gone.

Peter Cavanaugh, Oakhurst