Look back, and look ahead

Look back, and look ahead

EDITOR:

The lead article in last Sunday’s Vindicator, “Image Issues,” deals with something that I deal with every day. I am a local historian, and it strikes me as odd that for many of our residents, our area’s history began on a Monday in September 1977.

Before that day, our community did not have an identity crisis. On the contrary, the Mahoning Valley existed to do one thing, and that was to make steel. We did it so well that a group of Youngstowners created a company that grew to become the fourth largest steel producer in the United States in the 1920s. Our grandfathers and great grandfathers worked for companies such as William B. Pollock, United Engineering and McKay Machine inventing, designing and building the steelmaking machinery that was needed all over the world to smelt, roll and forge steel products. Our valley was a place where if it could be dreamed, it could be built. Built by the trainload, day after day, decade after decade. It is this legacy that should be remembered and celebrated.

If you want to study our past, it would do us good to set aside the last 30y years and study the time period from 1846 until 1977. You will learn that the people of Youngstown were ambitious, intelligent, motivated people who could turn mere rocks into bridges, buildings and automobiles. Youngstowners were fearless, unafraid to handle hundreds of tons of 2800 degree molten steel at a time. We did not let anything stand in our way when there were important things to be accomplished.

When the industry left Youngstown it left us with an identity crisis. We put all of our blood, sweat and tears into making steel and did not know what to do when we were no longer needed to make steel. Over the past three decades it has been a long road toward finding what our new purpose should be. But we are finding that new purpose as each of us pull ourselves up by our bootstraps, harnesses that deep down Youngstown “Can Do” attitude and creates our own new purpose for being.

Perhaps we need to start thinking of our past as something to be proud of instead of something to cry in our beer about.

RICK ROWLANDS

Youngstown

X The writer is executive director of the Tod Engine Foundation and has an interest in preserving Youngstown’s steel industry heritage.

It’s a matter of pride

EDITOR:

Our reflection is defined by how we see ourselves, not by how others perceive us. I believe that is the answer The Vindicator is looking for in regard to our image problem in the Mahoning Valley. In the entire article, there was not a quote by anyone who said they have pride for their city and county. Well, I am proud of who I am and where I come from, and that place is Youngstown, Ohio. Born and raised in the Mahoning Valley, I would not change a thing.

If you want to solve Youngstown’s image problem, the people are going to have to take as much pride in their city and county as they do their own ethnicity and heritage. For a start, we can stop being so hard on ourselves. Secondly, we can stop caring about what other people think. Too often we criticize ourselves and let the cynicism of people from outside the area dictate how we think.

The people of the Mahoning Valley come from a proud history, and our residents are hardworking, shrewd, and determined. When the steel mills closed, the people of this Valley pulled themselves up by their bootstraps and turned things around the best they could without the help of Columbus, a city that owes us more than we owe them. In the face of industry failure, political corruption, organized crime, and corporate fraud, the residents of the Mahoning Valley faced their share of challenges. But with these challenges came the building of tremendous character and identity, and those two things can never be taken away from us.

Great things can still come from this area, as soon as we learn to take pride in ourselves and fight for our Valley.

ALEX MANGIE

Canfield

Canfield residents should keep an eye on school board

EDITOR:

While many private-industry workers are facing layoffs, reduced hours and reduced pay, Canfield school officials are enjoying hefty salary increases which they received this past October.

It’s a shame that most people don’t pay attention to the automatic salary increases that school officials lobby for themselves. That is especially true here in Canfield.

The best (aka “worst”) example of this may be our school superintendent, who is making $97,689 after receiving a 3 percent raise and a $1,500 bonus. What performance earned him a bonus? Our superintendent is assisted by a business manager, who is paid $77,670 after a 3 percent wage increase and a $1,500 bonus.

Compare these salaries to Poland school district, where the superintendent makes about $70,500 and gets along fine without paying a business manager. Why does Canfield spend a combined $100,000 more annually for about the same services?

It’s time to pay attention to what goes on behind closed doors in executive sessions at our School Board meetings. Every time we don’t, it costs us.

PHIL COLONNA

Canfield

McDonald resident happy to see end of outdoor furnaces

EDITOR:

I would like to commend the mayor of McDonald and the council that voted to get rid of the outdoor furnaces.

It’s great to have a mayor who thinks of the people other than just him self or his neighbors, Maybe the next new car I buy will smell like a new car instead of burning wood. It will be great to be able to open my windows in the spring.

When I first moved here just about every house had a burn barrel. They did away with them. I think these outdoor furnaces are just as bad.

DAVID CHERNISKY

McDonald