HOMETOWN ABSTRACTS
First Edition

My hometown is a medium sized town of approximately 55,000 people, located in the north central section of Ohio. The name of the town is Mansfield, named after Jared Mansfield, the surveyor general in 1808. It is located geographically in the western foothills of the Allegheny Plateau in the county of Richland, named literally because of it rich fertile soil.

When I arrived on the scene in the thirties, Mansfield was a manufacturing center with many heavy industries thriving, the biggest being Westinghouse corporation and Tappan Stove company among many others. The town thrived until sometime in the seventies when the steel recession caused many of the industries to move to other countries or to the south because of cost incentives. They never returned and Mansfielders had to become somewhat innovative and change from a manufacturing base to a service based economy.

I too left my hometown in the fifties, but returned in the early seventies. We may leave our hometowns for economic gain, but that feeling for the place of our birth and the simple life instilled right or wrong in our brains seems somehow to draw us back. The moves back are highly personal in each case and sometimes it works out, and sometimes it doesn't. In my case it was a right move.