Former mayor on Frontline’s Dayton special: ‘It takes a lot longer to rebound than it does to hit bottom’

MORE ON THE FRONTLINE SPECIAL

• Dayton not ‘Left Behind,’ ready for a comeback story

• Frontline puts Dayton in spotlight as city left behind

• What you thought about Frontline portraying Dayton as city left behind

In my view, the Dayton experience in those 15 years or so would have permanently scarred most communities.

Mayor Dave Hall, in the 1960s had to preside over a city in social chaos and racial divide while part of Dayton burned. In the 1970s, Mayor Jim McGee had to watch as 35,000 good-paying manufacturing jobs left the city and the greater Dayton community. Home-owned banks gave way to new out-of-state ownership, and CEOs of Dayton businesses moved from homes in the northwest part of the city to the booming suburbs. No city recovers quickly from that kind of setback.

It takes a lot longer to rebound than it does to hit bottom, especially when recovery for a community includes a redefinition of its economic base.

I remember as a kid, when Van Buren Village sought to be annexed to Dayton. The region’s center city was the envy of all. When Dayton said no, Van Buren incorporated. That city today is Kettering. Dayton’s loss. To our east, Columbus Mayor Jack Sensenbrenner in the 1960s and ’70s, was annexing everything in sight. The result? Columbus became a region unto itself. They avoided petty disputes with other area entities and had plenty of acreage for development and tax base expansion.

We missed some opportunities. As a consequence, Dayton still has some major challenges that provide headwinds to progress: a school system that makes city living unattractive to a lot of young families with children; some inner-city neighborhoods that look awfully tired and worn; and a parochial point of view at a time in history when regionalism of some kind is being embraced by many American communities.

I told Frontline this: If I was given the opportunity to choose a new place to make my home, it would still be Dayton, Ohio. The core of the city has made an incredible turnaround. In my opinion, no city in the “old rust belt” has better weathered economic upheaval than the Gem City. Moreover, we are well on our way to economic diversity which should be insurance against a future collapse in our economic base.

We live in a cost-effective community. People have old-fashioned, Midwestern, values. That counts for a lot. And because of our heritage, we have an inventive spirit that will always serve us well in an increasingly competitive world. Those who came to Dayton in the 1980s and since have only been apart of the recovery. Those of us who were born and raised here have a better appreciation for the community’s history: boom years in the 1950s and early ’60s followed by loss of jobs, loss of businesses, and a painful deterioration in many neighborhoods.

Frontline’s point of view was from, at most, only a few days in Dayton. It takes more than that to get a true appreciation for a city — what it was, what it is, and what it can be.

I once had a journalism professor at Ohio University who told my class, in the midst of a debate about bias in the press and media, that “as long as human beings are writing the stories, they will bring with them a point of view.” The Frontline story was not a “hit piece.” The crew was professional and complimentary. It was just one news outlet’s narrow “point of view” about Dayton. It’s great that cheerleaders for the city came forward with their defense of our city. That’s always needed. The “truth” is, however, we have come a long way back. And, the “truth” is we still have a long way to go.