Appalachia: A Place of Hope

by David Descutner, Ph.D.

Outside of five years from 1974 to 1979, when I was in graduate school at the University of Illinois, I’ve spent my life in Appalachia. My roots in Appalachia go all the way back to my birth in Crucible, Pennsylvania, a tiny town nestled in the southwest part of the state right on the Monongahela River. It was named for the Crucible Steel Company that owned the local mine. I was the baby among five children and the beneficiary of unconditional love from my four siblings and my parents. My dad was a bookkeeper for the mine and my mom kept the house and looked after all of us. I had an idyllic early childhood roaming through the woods, catching snakes and salamanders and learning how to fish, hunt, and trap.

My dad’s status as a salaried employee allowed us to live in what was known as “bosses’ row,” a set of comfortable company houses with indoor plumbing. We paid 27 dollars a month in rent, including utilities, and we shopped at the company store for everything from food to appliances. One mile from our house was “the patch” where the miners and their families lived in small, drafty houses, most of which had neither running water nor indoor plumbing. I was permitted to skip kindergarten and start first grade when I was five, and soon I recognized that my classmates from “the patch” did not have warm clothes and good shoes and regularly did not bring a lunch to school. That was my first exposure to the poverty born of economic inequality that plagued Appalachia then and sadly is still in place today.

When I was eight the mine closed and my dad was transferred to Midland, Pennsylvania where the Crucible Steel mill had been operating since 1911. Midland was on the Ohio River, very close to the eastern border of Ohio, and still within the boundaries of Appalachia. It was a thriving town with a real urban feel that was entirely different from Crucible. Midland was diverse in every way—culturally, racially, religiously—and nevertheless segregated, as no persons of color lived east of Seventh Street.  Just as my time in Crucible awakened my consciousness of poverty and economic inequality, so too did my time in Midland make me aware of the pernicious and pervasive effects of racism in Appalachia and beyond. My life in Midland, which spanned 1961 to 1974 when I graduated from Slippery Rock State University, was also idyllic but now my interests were competitive tennis, deep friendships, national politics, and the emerging counterculture of which I was happily a member.

My third and final stop on my life journey in Appalachia was Athens where I arrived in the summer of 1979 to commence my career as a professor of communication at Ohio University. After spending the five previous years in the flat farm country of Illinois, southeast Ohio’s hills and vast stretches of woods and creeks were such a sweet reminder of Pennsylvania. It would have been easy to stay within the city limits of Athens, which is what most of my colleagues did, but I chose instead to venture out into the wider world to take in the abundant natural beauty and visit “the little cities of the black diamonds” that reminded me of Crucible. I started teaching at the regional campuses in my first year, which took me even farther into Appalachia. For many years I continued to teach on those campuses, including Chillicothe, Ironton, Zanesville, and Lancaster, and I met so many students there who reminded me people I knew growing up:  hard-working, resilient, family-centered folks who loved their communities. I developed lasting relationships with a number of  local business owners, farmers, and  university staff members, nearly all of whom were natives of the region, and discovered they were enculturated into the same values as I had been in Crucible and Midland.

What I also regrettably discovered the longer I lived here was evidence of the vexed history of this region in the form of hillsides denuded by strip mining, pretty streams rendered orange and lifeless by mine drainage, once vibrant coal towns  now marked by boarded-up storefronts, and local school districts without sufficient resources to meet the needs of their students. The good news is that over the last twenty years many of these problems have begun to be addressed, as land damaged by mining is being reforested, waterways are being cleaned and made safe for aquatic life, and once moribund towns are benefitting from fresh investment. Schools too are receiving attention and assistance, and this is where the Appalachian Children’s Coalition (ACC) has had a genuine impact.  I’ve served on the ACC Board for the last four years, during which the ACC’s mission of “improving the health and wellbeing of our region’s children” has been realized in multiple ways. Specifically, the ACC offers those who serve children essential information on resources and best practices, and  provides opportunities for practitioners to convene and learn from experts in children’s behavioral health. The ACC also has launched a set of initiatives to expand  the behavioral health workforce so that children will have access to critically necessary services. In the last two years, thanks to the support of Governor DeWine, the Ohio State Legislature, Nationwide Children’s Hospital, and dozens of health care  and school partners, the ACC is in the process of establishing school-based health and wellness clinics in 28 schools across Appalachia Ohio. Brighter days are surely ahead!

Crucible,  Midland, and Athens are certainly different from one another but they share many qualities that I associate with Appalachia. In all three places nothing matters more than family and especially children. As a proud Appalachian, I could not be more happy to be a small part of what is a transformational moment for Appalachia and its children.

About the author:

David Descutner, Ph.D., is a longtime resident of Appalachia and a retired professor of communication at Ohio University, where he dedicated his career to teaching and mentoring students across both the Athens campus and regional campuses. Raised in Pennsylvania and deeply shaped by his Appalachian roots, Dr. Descutner has a lifelong commitment to understanding and addressing the social, economic and cultural forces that impact the region.

He currently serves on the board of the Appalachian Children’s Coalition, where he contributes his experience and passion to advancing initiatives that support the health and well-being of children and families across Appalachian Ohio.