If you could write your life’s script, what would be the setting? If you could cast yourself in any role, would you play the lead, or serve as an extra who simply watches the scenes play out? In real life, upon one’s birth, a person is powerless to choose his family and is equally powerless to decide the environment in which he will live.
In 1949, a variety of circumstances led to nine families living in a northern Richland County neighborhood known as Little Kentucky. Some were locals whose families were already planted in the impoverished area, long before World War II, whereas others were transplants from West Virginia and Kentucky who were looking for a better way of life.
Henry Adkins fell into the latter category, as he had chased jobs and dreams for many years, before finally making one last attempt to gain meaningful employment in the Industrial Mecca known as Mansfield, Ohio. With the promise of help and housing offered to him by his sister, Henry decided that the chances of finding essential and long term employment were more likely to happen in that area’s burgeoning economic climate, than in the economically depressed hills of Kentucky.
Henry’s wife, Sarah, did have a choice in regards to the matter of moving to Ohio; she could either stay in Kentucky with their five children and wait for Henry to send money for their household expenses, or she could gather her kids and make the move with her husband. The Adkins children, on the other hand, didn’t have a single say in the matter and certainly were unable to write that chapter in their lives.
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