Why Do Americans Stay When Their Town Has No Future?
John Arnett fishes with a friend and former co-worker on the Ohio River. Behind them is Arnett’s workplace since 2004, J.M. Stuart Station, one of two coal-fired power plants in Adams County, Ohio. They’re scheduled to close in June.
Photographer: Philip Montgomery for Bloomberg BusinessweekJohn Arnett chose Adams County, Ohio, as his home long before he was old enough to vote, drink beer, or drive a motorcycle along the Ohio River. After his parents split up, Arnett opted at age 10 to spend most of his time with his grandmother in Adams County, along the river 70 miles southeast of Cincinnati, rather than with his parents in the Dayton area. He liked life on the tobacco farm his grandfather had bought after retiring early from General Motors Co. in Dayton. And his grandmother, who became a widow when her husband died in a tractor accident, welcomed the companionship.
After high school, Arnett joined the U.S. Marine Corps, in 1999. His unit, the 1st Battalion, 7th Marines—the storied Suicide Charley—took him to the other side of the world: South Korea, Japan, Thailand. In the spring of 2003 he was an infantryman in the invasion of Iraq, spending five months in country—Baghdad, Tikrit, Najaf.