There is an emotional attachment to the Wawa store we grew up with, writes Austyn for Lite 96.9 WFPG.

 In Austyn’s case, it was a Wawa at 71 Lakeview Drive in Gibbsboro, New Jersey.

She hadn’t been there in years, but it was part of her collective memories.

“This… is my favorite Wawa in the whole world,” she wrote.

Now, this Wawa that had been there the longest of any in the Voorhees/Gibbsboro area was closed, and the building turned into a Welsh Farm store.

When she discovered the Wawa was gone, she was shocked and dismayed.

“So I sat there for a minute… and as I thought about all of the seemingly negligible memories I’d made at that corner throughout my upbringing… I started to cry,” she wrote.

Original Wawas are part of our fabric, she wrote, these little Wawas that paved the way for the “Super” Wawas to come.

One by one, these originals are disappearing, and it feels like more than losing a convenience store.

“It feels like losing a home,” she wrote.

We can appreciate the Super Wawas but the intimacy of the originals isn’t there.

“They had more soul,” she wrote.

Read about Austyn’s personal Wawa recollections at Lite 96.9 WFPG