MINGO JUNCTION, OHIO — Many people living in this town of used-to-be’s don’t expect their community will ever return to its glory days.
They don’t anticipate the return to a downtown of bustling businesses patronized by a well-paid middle class working at the Wheeling-Pittsburgh Steel plant. They want a little fresh paint on the vacant buildings, to cover up the sorrows lining the main business district’s ironically named Commerce Street.
And they’re not expecting magic from President Trump.
“All we need is to invest in ourselves with some small businesses up and down the street, and we’ll be fine,” said Rich Grimm, a retired steel worker. Grimm is aspirational, pragmatic about the return of steel or coal jobs, and determined.
Thirty-two former businesses line both sides of Commerce Street. Heading west, two nonprofits and a post office are the only things open on the right-hand side; two bars and a dentist’s office are the only things open on the left.
Grimm sits with five other locals sipping coffee at the Mingo Junction Senior Center. Tom Strohmayer is to his right, Baci Carpico to his left; Fred and Diane Pernick, the husband-and-wife director and secretary of the center, sit across the table with Teresa Elder, at 47 the youngster of the group and the only African-American.
All are Democrats. All except Elder voted for Trump; she didn’t care for any of last November’s candidates.
They’re happy with what Trump has done so far — limiting US entry from certain countries; plans for a wall along the US-Mexico border; taking the ObamaCare bull by the horns — but it’s tax and regulation reform that they all believe will truly help their community.
“Look, we all know the steel jobs aren’t coming back to the degree they once were, nor the coal jobs,” said Grimm. “Honestly, we never expected that.
Bobby Westfall stood in the covered doorway of a Christian community center, holding 11-month-old daughter Madison as she gleefully captured raindrops during a March morning downpour.
Westfall is one of the ones who got away. After using and selling drugs, he left town, found redemption, got married and was living in Nashville, Tenn., when that nagging need to come home became too insistent for him and his wife Stacey to resist. So they returned.
Six months ago they opened Rustic Junktion, part antique store, part community center. They started a nonprofit to provide a space for young people to hang out before or after school and avoid the lure of opioids that are killing many of the youth still left in this part of the country.
“Most people are never compelled to come back to a place that is so flat on its back,” Westfall said. “But I see hope here, and I see a chance to make a difference.”
He doesn’t talk politics, but he does say that most news reports got people wrong in last year’s election by describing them as angry and bitter: “No, it was always about aspiration, it was always about wanting something better.”
“It still is,” said Greg Robinson, who sat across the street at Dr. Patrick Palma’s dentist office, waiting for a check-up.
Robinson, who worked for 23 years at Wheeling-Pittsburgh Steel, stunned both his dentist and the office receptionist, Alice Giles, when the longtime Democrat admitted that he not only voted for Trump but thinks the new president is doing a great job.
The old Wheeling-Pitt plant parallels the town geographically, touching it from end to end, and making it impossible for anyone to escape its imprint on their lives. Twin Mingo Stadium arches stand as stone sentinels of a bygone era, when the community supported its own school district.
Late last month, eight years after closing, the old steel mill surprised everyone by re-opening under new ownership, as Acero Junction, Inc.
Company officials didn’t immediately return calls for comment, but WTOV-TV, the local NBC/Fox affiliate, has reported that the mill currently employs 70 people, with the goal to eventually have around 270, most of those from the Ohio Valley.
“That’s good news,” Robinson said, “but it’s not why I voted for Trump. It’s bigger than that, it’s better than that, because we all know the future is beyond making steel.”