Faith Works 6-26-21

Faith Works 6-26-21

Jeff Gill

Changes for the better all around

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What is better?

This is a question I was asked after last week's column, and one I'm delighted to answer.

Now, in keeping with my observations from before, I'll note again I only arrived here in 1989, but I got to Licking County, Ohio as soon as I could! And I have access to bits and pieces of the historical record back through earlier decades, but those are often bloodless and cold pieces of data, which might miss out on lived experience.

I do wish I'd gotten here soon enough to see the railroad roundhouse for myself, just east of downtown. I'm sorry never to have seen four (or was it five?) theaters letting out at night around Courthouse Square all at once, or smoke billowing from the tall stack at the Wehrle Stove Works off Union Street; it would have been cool to visit the aluminum plant south of town to see them making structural members for the Goodyear F2G-1 "Super Corsair" but in 1945 I probably would have been shot as a spy if I didn't have a job there.

So I know there were many good things happening in Newark and around our county in earlier days. My challenge was about making too easy a leap into presuming if the parts we knew were good, then the times were good. If life was good for a few, and not for the many, there's a theological, let alone a practical argument against calling that situation "the good life." Are there elements and pieces and parts of the way of life our community knew back in previous eras worth preserving? Certainly, and from the archival and interpretive work of The Works as a museum, let alone the ministries of many area churches, we have plenty of energy and interest in conserving much that has been and still is good.

What's not worse? Or better yet, what is better today? I am glad you asked. As Newark City Schools work to get their graduation rate up over 90% and keep it there, did you know that this is significantly higher than the same statistic would have been any time after World War II? It's true, but so many get the impression that grad rates are down from partisan rhetoric. In fact, we simply used to accept dropping out much more easily as part of life, and didn't expect school districts to see much more than 50% of the number of students who started first grade cross a platform for a high school diploma.

And in fact Newark has long been a leader in special education for students with a variety of disabilities, physical and developmental, but the truth is we only required all U.S. school districts to educate students with physical and mental disabilities after 1975, with many programs only getting fully engaged from 1990. We can and should be proud of Eleanor Weiant and those around here who began education for children with disabilities in 1952, and got a dedicated school built for that in 1967, but it was sadly a choice, one that many districts didn't make until required to, and not that many years ago. Today, such education is a norm and incredibly helpful for both persons with disabilities and their families.

We have lost factories, much of the manufacturing base that built our area; places like the Heisey Glass factory closed in 1957, and many more factories in the Seventies and Eighties shut down or drastically trimmed workforces. What we have today, though, is not just a service economy expansion, but a vibrant region for employment, advancement, and innovation.

The Newark-Heath-Licking County Port Authority is an engine of economic vitality that I'm always amazed people don't know more about. Centering on the former Newark Air Force Base in Heath, it's now a series of plants and factories and warehouses where food stuffs are made, materials are shaped, and products shipped around the world, with many excellent jobs for both tradespeople and college grads alike.

Denison University and The Ohio State University's Newark Campus are utterly different than they were in student makeup and course offerings back when I first moved here. They reflect our entire community and the whole nation in ways we can be proud of; Central Ohio Technical College has four campuses in our immediate area and they are opportunity factories in their own right.

There's more about what's right in our community and our country I'd love to tell you about next week.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; if he could have anything back, it might just be The Jimmy Dean Show on Thursday nights after Mom got home from choir practice. Tell him what you value from the past at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.