Not everyone in Middletown, Ohio, is as rough and tumble as the family dissected in JD Vance’s childhood memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy.” I know. I have roots in Middletown, too. My parents were born and raised there, and I still have cousins there.
In case you’ve been submerged in a submarine for the past few months, Vance is the Republican vice presidential candidate running alongside Donald Trump for president in November. “Hillbilly Elegy” made Vance nationally known and helped him get elected to the U.S. Senate in 2022.
Hillbilly Elegy: Memoirs of a Family and Culture in Crisis is Vance’s memoir of his childhood in Middletown, a town the size of Grand Island in southwest Ohio. Vance writes of relatives who argued and fought, who discarded their spouses like dirty handkerchiefs, and who drank alcohol and drugs.
Vance focuses on a group—the Appalachian poor—that has long been under the media radar, which may be why the book topped the New York Times nonfiction bestseller list when it was published in 2017.
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I was shocked when I read Vance’s book. The Middletown I grew up in is not the Middletown Vance writes about.
Every city has poor neighborhoods. It’s not right to tar the whole city of Middletown with the same brush.
It was 250 miles southwest of Cleveland, where I was born and raised. We spent a week there every summer with grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins. I loved it.
I swam in the Sunset Pool, picnicked at Armco Park, went to LeSourdsville Lake and caught fireflies with my cousins on summer nights. We walked down the alley to the neighborhood grocery store to buy 10-cent popsicles as the trains sped by. The steeple of the First Presbyterian Church played hymns daily at noon and 6 p.m.
My late uncle was the editor of the Middletown Journal. Another uncle was a bank manager. And another uncle was a hard-working electrician. Unlike Vance’s relatives, my Middletown relatives had good jobs, strong families, and went to church every Sunday.
Vance’s only bright spot is the conclusion of his book: “The most important lesson is not that society failed to provide me with opportunities. The real problem for many of these kids is what is happening (or not happening) at home.”
My paternal grandparents, Joseph and Pearl Day, believed this too.
Joseph and Pearl were born and raised near Beattyville, Kentucky. They married in 1908. He was 21, she was 17. Joseph worked in a coal mine, but one day, determined to find a better life, they packed up their child, a cow and a sow and took the train to Middletown to make a fresh start.
They rented a tiny apartment. Eventually, Joseph bought a grocery store. They joined the Methodist Church and kept a clean house and clean clothes for their nine children. “Soap is cheap,” Pearl always said. “You can be poor, but you can be clean.”
If Pearl were still alive, she would frown at Vance’s story of his difficult life with slovenly, slapping, drinking hillbillies who had immigrated to Middletown from Kentucky.
Vance’s mother was a drug addict. His father and stepfathers ran away. In one chapter, Vance climbs out of his mother’s moving car and runs for his life because she is drugged and has vowed to kill him. His flawed but caring grandparents, also Middletonians, were his shaky safety net.
It was the U.S. Marine Corps that made Vance a responsible citizen. He later earned degrees from Ohio State University and Yale University Law School, got married, and is now the CEO of an investment firm in Silicon Valley. It’s a shame Hillbilly Elegy doesn’t go into that. I’d love to read the details of Vance’s rise from rags to riches. The story is there.
As I read, I grew impatient with Vance’s repeated claims that every family in Middletown was a complete mess.
My grandparents didn’t fight. They focused on the opportunities. Eight of their nine children paid for their own education. One earned a doctorate. Uncle Paul became editor of the Middletown Journal. My father became news director at WGAR radio in Cleveland.
My mother’s family from Middletown, which also had Kentucky roots, was equally determined. My grandfather was raised by his widowed mother, and after finishing eighth grade, he started a transportation business. My mother was valedictorian of her high school class in Middletown and the first in her family to graduate from college.
Yes, Middletown has withered in recent years with the demise of AK Steel, but I fear readers of Hillbilly Elegy assume every Middletown resident is a cheating, drunken, unemployed scumbag.
All of us, the descendants of Pearl and Joseph, and also those of Mary and Arthur, know where we come from and who we are. Our laughter, our camaraderie, our moral values and our iron-clad affection for one another are irreplaceable. It all began in Middletown.
Mary Jane Skala is a reporter at the Kearney Hub who covers health and nonprofits, writes features, and writes a Saturday column (editor’s note – even while recovering from breast cancer surgery). Reach her at [email protected].
