SitemapResidents of the Mahoning and Shenango valleys who were alive in 1977 look back on Sept. 19 as a date that lives on in infamy, the day the Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. announced it would all but shutter its operations in the Mahoning Valley.
It was the beginning of the prolonged and agonizing retrenchment of the domestic steel industry. We prefer to look forward. The worst is long behind us. We not only survived, we refused to admit defeat and worked our tails off. We’ve bounced back, not to where we were in 1977, but we’ve adjusted and recovered, giving us reason for optimism about the next 40 years. Especially heartening are the people who grew up here in the aftermath of Black Monday, left for greener pastures but returned and are playing leading roles in the rebirth of the Mahoning Valley. Their names appear often in the media here: R.T. and Hannah Vernal, Ian Beniston, John Slanina, Becky Keck, Dominic Marcionda, Daniel Catullo, Chris Rutushin, Heather McMahon, Danielle Seidita, Denise Bayer and Sophia Buggs, to name but a dozen. They are half of the contingent that sociologist Jill Ann Harrison, a professor at the University of Oregon, interviewed in depth for a paper she wrote, “Rust Belt Legacy: The Pull of Place in Moving Back to a Legacy City.” To read the full story from The Business Journal, click here.