Community Matters: Why we returned to Beaver County
About 10 years ago, in the summer of 2011, my family moved back to Beaver County.
Moving home was something my wife and I had been thinking and dreaming about since getting married in the early 2000s. But education and work pulled us away from our roots and required what we assumed would only be a temporary relocation. To our surprise, what we envisioned as temporary soon grew into a decade of bouncing around the country, starting a family, chasing an education, and establishing careers that were not readily available here in Beaver County.
By the time 2010 rolled around, my wife and I had spent a decade completing our formal education, having three kids, and landing decent jobs. We were living in a small town called DeLand, Fla., located about 40 miles north of Disney World and 30 minutes west of Daytona Beach. Both my wife, Pamela, and I were teaching at Stetson University, a small liberal arts school known mostly for its music and law programs. We had stable careers and a bright professional future, all while living in a part of the world many consider an ideal vacation spot.
But something was wrong.
As a researcher, I focused on the idea of ‘hope’ and how its presence or absence affects the way a community views itself. My wife’s teaching and writing was directed at how art creates culture and generates a sense of shared identity. Professionally, we were consumed with thinking about the importance that relationships play in making life meaningful. We understood that deep ties to others generated resilience, that remaining close to one’s roots was often vital to their sense of fulfillment and belonging.
Professionally and intellectually we knew just how important a robust community was. Yet, even so, our own children were growing up 1,000 miles away from their grandparents, aunts and uncles. And my wife and I were losing our connections to deep and enduring relationships back home that had been integral in shaping our values, our history and our identities. Somehow, in the process of learning and teaching about the value of community connections, we had lost sight of the importance of these truths for our own lives.
And so, after several years of soul searching and planning, we resigned our posts at the university and returned home to Beaver County.
I say we returned home. But truth be told, this description is not precisely true for me. I grew up in Clearfield County, about two hours north and east of here. My wife is the true Beaver County native, having grown up in Raccoon Township and attended Hopewell Area School District. Like many trailing spouses, I was slowly and willingly drawn into the rich gravitational pull of Beaver County. So thorough was this draw that by 2011, this part of the world felt very much like home to me, something that has only grown since our return a decade ago. I am often known to say, “I’m not from here, but it’s my home.”
If you’re natively from here, or, if like me, you’ve made it your business to become as close to a native as possible, then you know that there is something about Beaver County that the average person just cannot shake. There is a reason that there are Steelers bars all over the globe, that being from western Pennsylvania continues to mean something that is only truly understood by those who have lived here long enough to be ‘from’ here.
Even as people move from this place, it seems that western Pennsylvania is never far from their identity. My wife and I loved that intangible character that drew people in and kept them coming back to experience a kind of community that is increasingly rare. Pamela and I wanted that for our kids. And we wanted it for ourselves. This, more than anything is why we moved home, determined to dig into community life and to become a growing part of Beaver County’s rich and storied history.
Some 10 years after returning home, I find myself deeply intertwined in community life in Beaver County. I am a small business owner, committed to using commerce as a tool for community revitalization. I am also the executive director of RiverWise, a nonprofit network of more than 50 organizations aimed at growing a regional identity around the rivers of Beaver County. This ongoing column will focus on my journey back to Beaver County and will seek to encourage conversations about just why it is that community matters.
What does healthy community look like? What can we become if we allow ourselves to dream and labor together? Why and how is it that the process of living together well represents one of humanity’s highest callings? Where and why are we doing this with dignity? And where and how could we do it better? How might we elevate our collective imagination about living together more nobly and with greater purpose? These questions, and many more, will comprise the subject of future entries in this series. Perhaps most important, we will work to understand what it means to ask and answer these kinds of questions with Beaver County at the very center of the conversation.
I am honored to begin this journey together and hope that you will become a willing and engaged participant in this ongoing act of community formation.
I look forward to thinking alongside of you about just why it is that community matters.
Daniel Rossi-Keen, PhD, is the owner of eQuip Books, a community bookstore on Franklin Avenue in Aliquippa. Daniel is also the executive director of RiverWise, a nonprofit employing sustainable development practices to create a regional identity around the rivers of Beaver County. Daniel lives in Aliquippa with his wife, Pamela, and his four children. You can reach Daniel at communitymatters@getriverwise.com.
Originally published at https://www.timesonline.com.