Our Town Family

I’m not sure when I realized I would be in Athens County for a long time.

Like many, I came here for school, graduate school in English at Ohio University. I planned to graduate from a five-year program in three years—and for a while, I was actually on track. I finished my coursework half a year early, doubling up a few quarters (they were quarters then).

Then in the middle of studying for doctoral exams, I had a baby, my husband at the time left, and everything changed. Or, nothing changed at all—I was simply able to see better the town where I, and my newborn local, had landed.

It is a town where strangers, upon learning I was alone with a baby, left homecooked food on the porch and shoveled my driveway of snow. It is a town where hand-me-down clothes for my son continue to arrive on our porch to this day.

Uniquely integrated, the small town of Athens and Ohio University exist together like the honeysuckle that climbs around and over so many trees in southeastern Ohio. Students are part of the social and economic health of town, but they are also given the unique opportunity to change Athens—and to be changed forever themselves.

It does not take much to participate in the life of Athens, even as an undergrad. Students work at local businesses. They go to the farmers’ market. They go to dance nights at Casa and The Union. Most of these activities were lost to me as a grad student with a new baby, exhausted and overwhelmed. But then Athens came to me. After my son was born, one of the first visitors to our door was a Casa employee, bringing with her a huge tray of enchiladas and the restaurant’s famous brownies. The first place out I took my baby to was Jackie O’s for Sunday brunch.

In line at the Village Bakery, the stranger behind me held my infant while I paid. Once, when my then-toddler had a breakdown there and I had to quickly ask for our food to go, the cashier put a free muffin and an encouraging note in the carryout box. Once, when the tantrum happened on Court Street, a stranger across the street cheerfully shouted to my son, “Listen to your mother!” As my son learned to ride his bike, an elderly woman on South May rolled down her car window and called to me, “Good job, mama!”

These are small moments that many people might forget. But in the solitary life of a young parent raising a child alone, these kindnesses helped me keep going.

Athens is a town where the table you sit at weekly at the West End Ciderhouse becomes your table, and the strangers you encounter become your friends. Is it the remote location? Athens is a ninety-minute drive from a major airport. Rural on all sides, sometimes it feels we only have each other.

Is it the wilderness that encroaches upon campus and town, with soaring cliffs, rocky ridges, forests, lakes and streams? Students have the opportunity to see such beauty when they live here, to learn about foraging and conservation, to experience firsthand the beauty of rural Ohio—and to witness also the devastation of exploited land, pollution and the abuses of poverty.

You can ignore the poverty—and certainly, some students choose to. Or you can work for change, to contribute to something more, to leave the town better than you found it. Or maybe, not to leave it at all.

In Athens, students are likely to volunteer, to participate in local politics. Students are more likely to leave their mark on town through the many alumni who become longtime residents, sometimes employing other residents. Fluff Bakery was started and is run by alumni Jessica (BBA ’99) and Jason Kopelwitz (BS ’99). County Commissioner Chris Chmiel (BGS ’92) graduated from Ohio University, went on to start local farm Integration Acres and founded the Ohio Pawpaw Festival.

Athens is a town long changed by people who just intended to pass through. It’s a mark of praise for a place where people who were strangers soon become locals. That students who meant to move on, instead never left—or never forgot the community and came back as soon as they could.

Some come back to Athens to raise their families. Some come to build their businesses. Some retire here and see and support their own children at school.

Many students and alumni, like me, become something else. We become part of a large family, a family bigger than one single school or town—and at a time where so many of us are separated from the people and places we love, we need to remember what connects us, the many ties that bind us: the friends we can call family and the locations that call us home.

My son was born in winter, an usually snowy one, which further isolated the two of us, and we lived, at that time, in the country. I couldn’t walk anywhere, especially not to campus. I took a leave of absence from my degree program. In those months, I saw from a distance as many of my classmates and friends graduated or left Athens for jobs or marriage.

For a single mother and her baby who had no family close by, Athens became my family.

The person who worked the hardest to make sure I was still connected—that I would graduate and graduate on time, baby or no baby—was the administrative department secretary of the English Department, Barbara Grueser, a longtime southeastern Ohio resident and mother. She reminded me of deadlines when my brain was exhausted. In a snowstorm, she walked a document to the registrar’s office for me. When I finally returned to campus, she held my baby while I went to meetings.

As I write this, I have lived in Athens County for going on thirteen years. Like many people now, I am uncertain what the future holds for town, for the University, for the world. I have to believe that it matters that we were here in Athens, that we are here. I have to believe that what makes Athens unique—the spirit of giving, strangers helping strangers—will help it now. I have to believe it will continue: the community and its hope.

For generations, Ohio University has offered an opportunity to be part of a family—not just a campus family, which may be common with many colleges and universities, but a town family, which is rare. A real community with roots as strong as Ohio’s pawpaw or elm or birch trees.

As I write this, I am worried about my personal family, and I am worried about my town family. My Athens home.

But I remember when I was very young and a swath of woods was bulldozed for a building. My teacher, who was approaching retirement then, managed to smile. She told me something I never forgot—and I never forgot her smile: The trees will grow back, maybe not in my lifetime, she said. But they will grow back.

Feature image by Ellee Achten, BSJ ’14, MA ’17