This article is from 1993, has anything changed?

In a Gritty Town, Hope Outlives the Prosperity

By MICHAEL DECOURCY HINDS,
New York Times
Published: October 26, 1993

Against all odds, pine trees have taken root on the black mountain of coal mining waste that looms above this small city in central Pennsylvania. The people of Shamokin have also put down deep roots, holding fast to a bleak place despite a harsh economic climate. It is a triumph of time over adversity.

By objective measures, Shamokin (pronounced shuh-MO-kin) is a dying town. The coal and textile industries folded up years ago, unemployment rose, and most of the young people fled.

A quarter of the 9,200 residents here are over 65, a demographic fact apparent on any street on any weekday, making Shamokin's population the second oldest of any Pennsylvania city's, after Monongahela's. And except for Florida, Pennsylvania has the oldest population in the country, with 15.4 percent of its residents over 65, a fact the state recognizes by spending its lottery revenues on programs for people over 65. A Prison Is Good News

One of the few bits of good economic news lately was Shamokin's victory over a dozen other communities in the competition for a new state prison. The city sold bonds to build the institution, which opened a year ago just outside of town, and is leasing it back to the state. "Last October we had a job fair for 400 jobs at the prison, and 4,300 to 4,500 people came and applied," said David F. Matash, manager of the Shamokin Job Agency, a state employment office.

It is not clear how much the prison will mean to businesses in Shamokin, since many of the institution's supplies are bought elsewhere. But there are hopes that the utilities installed to serve the prison can make it easier to lure industry to the community.

To visit Shamokin (or any one of dozens of small towns like it) is to see a Pennsylvania a world away from the vitality of Pittsburgh and Philadelphia and just as far removed from the prosperity it once enjoyed from the mines and mills. To visit Shamokin is to be reminded, too, of how the bonds of place and family can sustain a community as it grows old and stares into a bleak future.

During the day, after many of the people of working age have driven to jobs as far away as Harrisburg, 55 miles to the south, or even Philadelphia, 125 miles away, Shamokin looks like a retirement community. But the gathering places are not golf courses but church basements. Getting By, Thank You

Many of the elderly in Shamokin say they lack for nothing they can't do without. But there are only a half-dozen doctors in town -- too few, the state says, to serve Shamokin and surrounding Northumberland County. The city does not have a pediatrician.

On a recent morning, a dozen elderly women sat around a table in the St. Stephen's Roman Catholic Church basement, peeling potatoes and onions to make pirogi, or dumplings, to sell to benefit the church school.

A 79-year-old widow, Vi Golden, said that on a typical weekday she went to 8 A.M. Mass, then helped out at a nursing home. Dinner is often a spaghetti or chicken plate at church. Her parents immigrated from Poland to work in the mines, and she has lived in Shamokin all her life. Her seven children all moved away to find work. "I do miss them," she said.

Mrs. Golden, who worked in factories and as a cook, retired with no pension and lives on a $517 monthly Social Security check. She lives in a frame house, next to her 87-year-old sister-in-law. "The house needs everything," she said, especially a new furnace.

People dismiss the notion that their city could wither away. They talk about living in homes built by their grandparents and attending churches their families helped build.

Their city is poor: the median household income is $14,500, and 21 percent of its residents live in poverty.

"It is disheartening when our youth have to go elsewhere for employment," said James E. Yurick, a city councilman and carpentry instructor at the regional vocational school. But he added, "I don't look at Shamokin as a dying city, and I don't look at Shamokin as a depressed, older community."

The biggest concern for many people is the Catholic Church's recent proposal to close five of the city's eight churches. "I have a lot of sorrow in my heart with all this talk of church mergers," said Dolores Demas, 63, a secretary at St. Stephen's Church.

Shamokin started as a mining camp in the early 1800's and reached its peak population of 21,200 in 1920. The coal mines gave out in the 1930's, and the textile mills and shoe factories began losing out to foreign mills in the 1970's.

In August, the last of the city's dress makers closed, laying off about 200 workers and pushing the local jobless rate to about 12 percent, compared with 6.7 percent nationally.

The city's biggest employer is the school district, but just outside the city limits, in an industrial park, several large companies employ a total of about 1,000 workers. They build mobile homes, package greeting cards and print tickets for theaters.

After being unemployed most of the last three years, Michael J. Canfield, 31, just started working for one of these companies as a part-time machinist at $9.60 an hour. He said that he had worked in Orlando, Fla., for five years but that he preferred the coal region. "It's more peaceful around here, and people know everybody," he said.

Ms. Demas, the church secretary, says that she and her husband moved away from Shamokin to Baltimore in 1950, so he could find work as a truck driver. They missed Shamokin so much that she recalls the date they were able to come back: July 25, 1986. "We couldn't wait to return," she said.

Shamokin is a sleepy place where people sit for hours on their porches. The most prominent building downtown is an abandoned shoe factory with a copper clock tower and six stories of broken windows. There used to be an empty textile factory across the street, but it recently burned down. The business district has several blocks of small shops, restaurants and medical supply businesses. Pressures From Outside

Shopping malls 20 miles away have taken their toll. Some Shamokin storefronts are vacant, two clothing stores are closing, and the largest store, J.C. Penney, had only a few customers one recent afternoon. Next door to Penney's, "Sleepless in Seattle" was playing in the only movie theater.

Residential streets, with names like Anthracite, Carbon and Coal, fan off the downtown area, up into the hills whose coal has scarcely been worth mining for decades. The mines and mills were not locally owned, so there are few big houses in town.

But no matter what it looks like, no matter what it is, Shamokin is home to some people. After going to Harvard College and Medical School, Dr. Wayne Miller returned to Shamokin to care for the elderly. They include his grandfather, Robert Evans, a retired miner who has black lung disease.

"I've always enjoyed living here," said Dr. Miller, who is 31 and practices internal medicine. "I grew up here seeing that the medical care was substandard, and I've always planned to come back."

Mr. Evans, who is 81, said he was not surprised by the decision. "We're doing pretty good here," he said.