Monday, December 31, 2018
By GRAIG GRAZIOSI
ggraziosi@vindy.com
YOUNGSTOWN
There was no shortage of prominent personalities and trends featured on the front pages of The Vindicator this year.
Arno Hill, the mayor of Lordstown, was out front in his support of a HomeGoods warehouse in his village that would create hundreds of jobs and bring in much-needed revenues.
The health of Youngstown Bishop George V. Murry took center stage as he battled leukemia, and U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan of Howland, D-13th, was at the forefront of several issues, including his political battles with President Donald Trump.
Here are the top people and trends for this year as selected by Vindicator staff and editors.
1 - Certainly one of the most far-reaching stories of the year, and one of the most heartbreaking, is the story of Amer “Al” Adi Othman.
The former owner of the Downtown Circle Market and Circle Hookah lounge, Adi, a native of Jordan, became a local symbol for the crackdown on undocumented immigrants by the Trump-empowered Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.
Adi’s story was a roller coaster, particularly for his family, who watched him face deportation, celebrate a potential reprieve and then disappear when ICE agents apprehended him during what was supposed to be a check-in meeting.
The fight to keep Adi in Youngstown included politicians from both parties and a sizable show of support from the public, but the outcry was not enough to stave off the deportation.
Adi was deported to Amman, Jordan, on Jan. 29 after a two-week hunger strike. The family sold its downtown businesses in September, and Othman’s wife, Fidaa Musleh, moved to Jordan to be with her husband.
2 - Dave Green, United Auto Workers Local 1112 president, and Mary Barra, CEO of General Motors, often found their names in the headlines. GM and its Lordstown assembly plant were often the subject of bad news this year. In June, Lordstown’s second shift was eliminated, and on Nov. 26, GM announced it would idle five North American plants, including the plant at Lordstown.
Green, newly elected to his position as president of the union local, was thrust into the spotlight as the 1,500 remaining workers at the plant – and their families, and the thousands of workers whose jobs are dependent upon the plant – looked to him for guidance in the face of the doomsday they’d dreaded for decades.
Barra has garnered the ire of a huge swath of elected officials and President Trump as well.
Though she has been busy talking with elected officials from the areas impacted by the closures, she’s also earned high praise from the company’s shareholders – the day of the announcement, the company’s stock shot up nearly 6 percent.
3 - The Most Rev. George V. Murry, bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Youngstown, was transported to the Cleveland Clinic in late April, where he was treated for a form of acute leukemia.
Because of his illness, Bishop Murry was forced to resign as chairman of the Ad Hoc Committee Against Racism in the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.
He returned to work in early September, announcing he was cancer free. His return came while sex-abuse scandals in the church were surfacing across the nation.
Bishop Murry released a list of clergy who were dismissed from the diocese due to credible allegations. The bishop assured Mahoning County Prosecutor Paul Gains the prosecutor’s office would have access to the church’s files for further investigation.
4 - U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan had a busy year. Almost every time Youngstown broke into the national consciousness, Ryan was involved.
He played a pivotal role as negotiator during the Othman deportation episode, co-led a group of venture capitalists on a tour through the Rust Belt, defended his seat against a young Republican challenger and once again was a central figure in a challenge to House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s leadership.
Ryan also played a major role in a pair of Lordstown stories this year. He had meetings with Barra just before and just after the announcement the company would idle the Lordstown plant, and he also was a major advocate for bringing a TJX HomeGoods distribution center to the village.
5 - Arno Hill, mayor of Lordstown, may have thought after the elimination of the second shift at the Lordstown GM plant and a contentious campaign to bring a TJX distribution plant to the village, he was done seeing his name in the news for 2018.
Then, as November was winding down, Hill once again found himself being interviewed by national media outlets after GM announced its plans to idle the factory.
Hill, who conducts himself in interviews with a down-to-earth, folksy demeanor, became the perfect icon for national news outlets to use to convey the idea of the beleaguered Rust Belt worker once again getting the shaft from the forces of the global market.
6 - The family of Loraine Lynn claimed that Liberty Police Chief Toby Meloro, a captain at the time, botched the investigation into Lynn’s death by not gathering key evidence.
Police initially ruled her death an accident when her body was discovered face down on a tractor submerged in her mother’s pond, but the late Trumbull County Coroner Humphrey Germaniuk ruled in February it was a homicide. Although the internal investigation concluded in August that the investigation “would have taken another direction” if Meloro followed the evidence, he was appointed interim police chief by Liberty trustees Arnie Clebone and Greg Cizmar to replace the retiring chief Richard Tisone.
7 - While real-estate trends improved somewhat in other parts of the country, the rise of predatory land contracts became a central rallying point for local neighborhood activist groups.
In March, local groups traveled to South Carolina to confront the owners of Vision Property Management, one of the companies behind many local land-contract deals. The contracts take uninhabitable homes and offer prospective homeowners “rent-to-own” type contracts that pass all responsibility of property maintenance and upkeep to the tenant.
8 - Dave Betras, the Mahoning County Democratic Party chairman and Michael Avenatti figured prominently in political headlines. With few exceptions, 2018 wasn’t a kind year for local Democratic candidates. On top of losing state legislative elections to Republicans Michael Rulli and Don Manning, local Democrats were also disappointed when lawyer Avenatti – who visited with local Democrat leaders twice this year and who mentioned his desire for a presidential run in 2020 – saw his political aspirations implode after he was arrested on allegations of domestic violence.
9 - Downtown developer Dominic Marchionda, formerly a manager for the NYO Property Group and influential figure in bringing the DoubleTree Hotel to downtown Youngstown, was indicted alongside former Youngstown finance director David Bozanich and former mayor Charles Sammarone on charges of corruption. Marchionda is accused of spending money he received from the city for use in developments on personal enrichment and medical expenses.
10 - Valley kindness. Despite the negative, there were plenty of positive stories this year as well. Youngstown State University baseball players Web Charles and Jeff Wehler adopted a dog that quickly became the team’s mascot; city residents came out in droves to support a mother after a fire destroyed her home and killed her children; and more than 1,000 signed up to participate in the United Way’s Day of Caring.