York County’s biggest challenge? Believing in ourselves

You’ve heard it. Maybe you’ve said it.

Cops spend most of their time in doughnut shops. Or no one goes to downtown York anymore, with all the crime down there.

Or York County, it’s the capital of Pennsyltucky.

Hyperbolic, knee-jerk and damaging things like that.

I’d like to add a few to that collection of easy sayings.

How about this? It’s nice to get some national recognition for the good that happens in York County rather than the bad news we always get.

Or a localized version of that. We hear stories about the bad things youths and young men get into, but we don’t hear about those who are doing positive things each day.

In York County, we say things like these. They just roll off our tongues or from our fingers. But as in our derision of our hardworking cops, our rebounding downtown or our complex county, most of the time we don’t reflect on whether they are true.

I’ve long believed that York County has a self-confidence problem that creates fertile soil for a hypersensitivity about how we’re regarded outside our borders.

Maybe that comes from confusion in our sense of place stemming from our geography as a border county that is in the North but touches the long Mason-Dixon boundary with the South. An old saying is that our forebears worked Northern soil while speaking German with a Southern accent.

Or maybe that we’re the first Pennsylvania county west of the wide Susquehanna so we didn’t have the polish and educational support that proximity to Philadelphia offers, say, Lancaster County. Our port was gritty Baltimore rather than the urbane Philadelphia.

Further, we don’t have that marquee identity maker that Hershey (chocolate), Harrisburg (state capital), Lancaster (Amish) and Gettysburg (Civil War) enjoy.

So we fumble with a litany of slogans and tags that don’t fit and never stick: Muscletown, First Capital and Factory Tour Capital, among others.

A consultant contracted to explore York and York County’s brand about three years ago found something particularly interesting in its research. 

The consultant produced a report comparing what those in York think about the city versus what outsiders say. Insiders recoil from perceived crime problems, blighted properties and weak public services.

Those living outside the area were almost unanimously positive about York city, noting its growth potential, historical assets and that it’s up and coming. 

That’s good research that backs up what I’m saying about our community inferiority complex: People outside York like us better than we do ourselves.

So when we make the New York Times for a deed, we soak up the self-validation. When the national media pick up a failing, we beat ourselves up.

Some in York County recently rejoiced about the Smithsonian’s acquisition of a collection of artwork from the camera of pioneering Black photographer Glenalvin Goodridge, whose photographic prowess is a well-known story in York County. 

All the fanfare caused a friend to tell me: “External validation is the bane of York County.”  

Gaining community confidence

What we need is a deeper sense of community self and collective inner strength.

So what are we to do?

Some of us are fond of telling stories about how a cab driver in Houston or somewhere else said about York: Oh, isn’t that where you had a racist mayor who was arrested?

Instead of shrinking back in our seats, we could reply: Yeah, we are embracing the work we must do in that area, but did you know the creative energy in York County has produced a multiplatinum-selling rock band with an international following and an artist whose pop art is compared to Andy Warhol’s? 

And we produced NFL Hall of Famers here. And Nobel Prize and Pulitzer Prize winners. 

And the co-creator of Pinterest.

And that’s just in the past 30 years, and we’re not counting the past creation of York Barbell, York air conditioners, York Peppermint Patties and the reinvention of Harley-Davidson bikes.

And did you know that we’ve scored a presence in the Smithsonian for the achievements of Appalachian Trail thru-hiker Earl Shaffer, Special Olympian Loretta Claiborne and now Glenalvin Goodridge?

And back to that prejudice thing: Did you know that other communities are looking at York County as a model of engagement between police chiefs and Black leadership?

York County residents are not different from others by having natures that remember the bad at the expense of the good. That’s why cop TV dramas are so popular. We say we like positive news, but, as a general rule, we don’t read it. We simply like conflict.

We need to understand this about ourselves and pay closer attention to a wider scope of good things happening in the community.

In battling our inferiority complex in York County, we should particularly take in the steady stream of our accomplished people who regularly make the news on the regional, state and international stages. For the past couple of years, I have collected these headliners to give context to those who keep lists of those regrettable times that York County has stumbled and made the national news.

Here’s just a small sampling of achieving York countians in 2020-21: Special Olympian Loretta Claiborne and forensic pediatrician Leslie Strickler gained Women of the Century honors in Pennsylvania and New Mexico, respectively. Trinity Thomas scored perfection in gymnastics. Washington Winona Images was highlighted in a Pennsylvania roundup of Black artists. North York’s Lebanon Cemetery scored an on-site visit from Lt. Gov. John Fetterman. York XL’s Sal Galdamez appeared on “Strong Towns’" national podcast.

By itself, Spring Grove produced at least four national headliners: Caputo Brothers was featured on the History Channel, actor Samuel McKoy-Johnson appeared in a major supporting role in a Hulu series, Eli Brooks starred in University of Michigan basketball and swimmer Hali Flickinger won a bronze medal in the Olympics.

For many more examples of accomplished people with York links, search for “playing big” in the Retro York Facebook group.

Likely, some of these accomplishments are new to many York County residents, though they were reported by the York Daily Record and its flagship website, ydr.com. Then YDR Facebook groups Retro York and Fixing York, with a combined total of about 40,000 members, provided ground for residents to discuss these achievers.

Herein lies therapeutic help in York County’s identity crisis. Let’s use the courageous story of Samuel McKoy-Johnson, who is successfully navigating the world of Hollywood, even with a challenging condition: brittle bone disease. Why don’t major business and civic groups collaborate to share about McKoy-Johnson’s and similar successes on their social media networks? That would increase the number of eyeballs by the thousands on that good-news story. That simply doesn’t happen much today in our siloed community.

Achievement happens. We fail to promote it. We don’t consume it. But we still complain as a community that we don’t honor our own achievers and shrink when bad news is aired nationally.

All this is not to say, of course, that we should overlook the fact that our communities have work to do. As just one telling example, amid apparent prosperity, the countywide poverty rate has grown from 5.6% to 7.3% since 1970.

Learning from Hampden

An interesting example of a community accepting and having confidence in its identity can be found in Baltimore.

That city’s Hampden neighborhood is an old mill town that, without self-consciousness, plays on its grittiness. It has a Honfest to trade on that expression of endearment heard around Bawlmer. 

Hampden has a gaudy Christmas decoration spectacle “Miracle on 34th Street,” in which residents go all out. And they keep those lights up until mid-January or later.

Yes, Hampden proves that communities in which working-class row houses reign can reinvent themselves and attract notice.

Before the pandemic, Hampden’s Golden West Cafe provided a treat accompanying the check. Each guest received a York Peppermint Pattie. 

This gesture in Hampden, a neighborhood tagged as “retro cool,” can be used to discuss York County’s identity issue.

When it comes to the cool-breeze mint in York, every eatery should hand out this trademark York peppermint candy and explain that it was created here.

Today, if many York residents were given that mint candy after a meal, we likely would lament that it’s no longer made here. 

We would be quick to add that it now comes from Mexico, no less.

There's that self-confidence problem again. We simply need to be better than that.

Jim McClure is the retired editor of the York Daily Record and has authored or co-authored eight books on York County history. Reach him at jimmcclure21@outlook.com.