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Monday, 5/30/22: Talking about counting blessings and summer reading recs

Happy Monday!

Today is also Memorial Day. Remembering those today who gave the ultimate sacrifice for our freedom. 

It’s also a new week, which means it’s time for your next Monday motivation newsletter. Read on below for some steps to a happier Monday, a short story and a roundup of positive thoughts to get your week started.

Meaningful Musings: Counting Blessings

I have a treat for you today! 

A few weeks ago, my Uncle John (my great uncle; my grandma’s brother) shared a draft of his article with me. He had recently been asked by a friend, who works for a local news outlet, to write about his recollections of growing up in Sharon, Pennsylvania. The article is set to be published locally next month or in July, but after reading, I asked for special permission to share early here 🙂  

Sharon is the backdrop of so much of my family’s history. I think it’s one of the reasons I loved Ann Patchett’s The Dutch House so much. The ‘Dutch House’ that the books centers around is more than a house – it is a compelling character in its own right, playing a central role in the trajectory of the characters’ lives. 

Yesterday would have been my grandma’s 86th birthday. I still miss her an unbearable amount, but one of the things I’m continually so thankful for is that we had Sharon. Sharon was our gathering place. Growing up, it’s where my brothers, cousins and I spent summers, made memories with my grandma, and were able to experience some of the magic of the place where she – and so much of my family – grew up. On paper, it might seem funny to use “magical” and “Sharon” in the same sentence, but that’s the power of experiences and cherishing who you’re with. 

I’m excited to share my uncle’s recollections of Sharon with you today. I know my grandma would have loved this article. I hope that for you, like it did for me, his article encourages you to think about the spaces – cities, homes, buildings – that shape our lives as much as we shape them.  

Counting My Blessings
By John P O’Brien

I was born at the Christian Buhl hospital in June of 1941 and spent my first 22 years growing up in Sharon.  While I didn’t fully appreciate it at the time, I now count my blessings how lucky I was to grow up in a safe community with so many wonderful amenities.
 
Think about it – where else could I have had Buhl Park with everything free – a wonderful swimming pool, a free golf 18-hole course known as the “Dum Dum”, free tennis courts, free pony rides, free summer camp, free picnic shelters, free ice skating, etc.
 
We also had the Boys Buhl Club with a gym, pool tables, ping pong, and many other free activities.  The girls had the Girls Buhl Club where their gym doubled as a coed dance floor on Friday nights for the jitter bug, the twist, and best of all some cheek-to-cheek dancing.   
 
Who could forget Protected Home Circle where if your parents bought a modest life insurance policy on you, you were eligible for ballroom dancing lessons and courses in manners and proper etiquette from Agnes Hadley the spouse of PHC’s CEO Samuel Hadley?  The PHC also held mock Tom Thumb weddings for pre-teens as part of its youth socialization programs.
 
With TV not yet universally available, we had four movie theaters – the Columbia, the Liberty, the Nuluna, and the Gable.  We also had two drive in theaters – the Hickory and Camp Reynolds.
 
It was also a short drive to Idora Amusement Park in Youngstown and Conneaut Lake Amusement Park.  For additional swimming with beaches, we had Yankee Lake, Sandy Lake, and Conneaut Lake – not to mention skinny dipping in the Shenango River after playground softball games.
 
Our local high school sports teams were off the charts terrific with the Sharon Class of 1957 going undefeated in both football and basketball and winning the state championship in basketball.  Farrell High School had a dominant basketball program and won several state championships and even beat Philadelphia Overbrook High School and their star player Wilt Chamberlain in the December 1954 Farrell Lions Tournament.  I was there with several of my Sharon Buddies not even believing that we could cheer for our archrival Farrell. It was great!
 
The population of Sharon in the 1940 census was 25,662 almost double what it is today.  The population of the Shenango Valley (Sharon, Farrell, Hermitage, and Sharpsville) in 1960 was 57,756 – about a third higher than the 2020 census of 37,690.  The population decline was largely the result of the loss of the Shenango Valley’s two largest employers when I was growing up – the Westinghouse Electric Transformer plant and Sharon Steel.
 
Sadly, in those days labor relations were at an all-time low.  The Westinghouse Electric strike in 1955 lasted 13 weeks with local violence that made the national news on a regular basis.  Time magazine chronicled the violence in Sharon and other Westinghouse plant locations in a January 1956 article entitled “Labor: Trouble in the Streets”.  Westinghouse built a new transformer plant in Athens Georgia and approximately 10,000 Westinghouse jobs were lost in Sharon and Camp Reynolds along with thousands of other local jobs at companies that provided products and services to the Westinghouse plant.  It was the most devastating economic event in my life in Sharon.
 
Meanwhile Sharon Steel was in a steady decline and has gone through two bankruptcies and numerous ownership changes.  The various owners and management never modernized Sharon Steel;  and it went from a high of about 8,000 jobs at its peak to perhaps a few hundred jobs today.  When we add the declines of GATX and Sawhill Tubular and several others, it’s truly amazing that the community has survived and sustained itself as well as it has.
 
To conclude, I have many wonderful memories and some sad memories of my hometown.  I count my blessings that I grew up in such a wonderful place to live and grow up – and I count my greatest blessing of meeting my spouse of 61 years – Margi McCamant O’Brien – in the first grade at Jefferson Elementary School.

Thank you, Uncle John, for letting me share this essay and for the reminder to count my blessings! 

On My Monday Radar

Things feel heavy right now. The Uvalde school shooting is unfathomable. I can’t stop thinking about the parents, the siblings, educators across our nation, and of course, the victims. There’s small actions outlined this article that I found helpful and I learned a lot from reading this one too. But it’s all just devastating. But, we move forward, we take action, we take care of ourselves and others. And as always, I hope something above or a link below resonates with you and provides you with something bright as you start your week. Here are a few positive links on my radar:  

That’s all for today! I hope you found something in today’s newsletter that sparked motivation, made you smile or inspired a positive Monday thought. Don’t underestimate the power of starting small… a fulfilling week starts with just one fulfilling day. You’ve got this! 

Let’s make it a great Monday!
Megan

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